Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 194, Issue 161

Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 194, Issue 161

[Po Lu]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2020 22:03:04 -0400, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> Is Electron free software?  If so, what is its license,
> and what does Emacs do that Electron does not support?
> (If there are lots of things, a few important ones would
> be enough of an answer.)

To answer your questions:
  - Electron is mostly under a free license, but is non-free, due
    to non-free blobs.  AFAICT, it's also patent-encumbered.
    https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1167
  - Electron is basically Google's Chromium browser, bundled
    up as an app development platform.
  - You're going to have a lot of issues if you try making
    Emacs use Electron.  For one, you're going to have to write
    a large part of the UI in JavaScript code, and then have it
    play well with C code.

Electron is non-free software, and that alone disqualifies it from
being used in Emacs, so there's that.

Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 194, Issue 161

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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  > To answer your questions:
  >   - Electron is mostly under a free license, but is non-free, due
  >     to non-free blobs.

That would definitely rule it out.

    > - Electron is basically Google's Chromium browser, bundled
    >   up as an app development platform.

    > - You're going to have a lot of issues if you try making
    >   Emacs use Electron.  For one, you're going to have to write
    >   a large part of the UI in JavaScript code, and then have it
    >   play well with C code.

I think either of these would make it technically unsuitable for
Emacs, even if it had no worse problems.

Thanks for researching the question.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)