From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: redisplay system of emacs Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:07:27 +0900 Message-ID: <87r5p7r5qo.fsf@xemacs.org> References: <4B633B7C.8030700@gmx.de> <873a1nvlki.fsf@gmail.com> <20100130132651.GB1428@muc.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1264863335 15264 80.91.229.12 (30 Jan 2010 14:55:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:55:35 +0000 (UTC) Cc: grischka , Paul R , rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Alan Mackenzie Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jan 30 15:55:32 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NbEjS-0001zl-Dz for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:55:30 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:39152 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NbEjR-0004RB-Rm for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:55:29 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NbEjN-0004QE-4m for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:55:25 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=50991 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NbEjM-0004Om-4A for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:55:24 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NbEjK-0003q0-9k for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:55:23 -0500 Original-Received: from mtps02.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:35372) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NbEjJ-0003pq-Ku; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:55:22 -0500 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mtps02.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id B84CD7FFA; Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:55:19 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id AF208120643; Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:07:27 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <20100130132651.GB1428@muc.de> X-Mailer: VM 8.0.12-devo-585 under 21.5 (beta29) "garbanzo" a03421eb562b XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:120700 Archived-At: Alan Mackenzie writes: > Are you a native English speaker? "Ecosystem" is a system of ecology, > which is the study of how organisms react with eachother and their > shared environment. Implicit in ecology is its participants' > obliviousness to ecology. I am a native speaker of English, and while *in science* "ecosystem" *normally* is used to refer to natural systems where the participants are "oblivious to ecology", in *policy discussions* (like this thread) it almost always signifies that that speaker takes a moral stance which (1) values the ecosystem as a whole and (2) holds that conscious participants in an ecosystem have a responsibility to help preserve that ecosystem. Both principles are somewhat opposed to the individualistic ethos of the free software movement. I am not at all surprised that (some) diehard free software advocates dislike the word "ecosystem", and most especially the suggestion that they are members of one. > There are other words which also imply interdependency yet which are > less laden with loaded meanings. "Ecosystem" implies its participants > (hackers etc.) are on the level of bugs, beetles and bacteria. Ah, if only we could aspire to such moral heights! Unfortunately, "just call me Lucifer, 'cause I'm in need of some restraint." (It's spelled differently in the Preamble to the GNU General Public License, but you can find that statement there if you look. :-) > It denigrates hackers, suggesting they are simply swept along > helplessly by outrageous fortune, rather than being the agents of > it. Hackers certainly do behave outrageously on occasion. However, while they are not helpless, to call them "agents of fortune" is hubris. > A "community" for example, which expresses all the tenets of > interdependency and tension. No good, sorry. "Community" derives from the word "common". As soon as we speak of multiple communities, we're clearly lost some important commonality, and the need for a term such as "ecosystem" becomes urgent. To borrow a word from David (+1 to everything he wrote, by the way), "ecosystem" stands for the *emergent* properties of a network of more or less different communities. Any casual observer of the Japanese or US political systems is immediately aware that communities only with extreme difficulty behave as rationally as humans, let alone beetles. I see no reason why a network of communities shouldn't be treated as an ecosystem, even if you object to the human members being treated as part of an ecosystem. > If you want to emphasise the ideas of competition between bits of > free software (say, between perl, python and ruby), the best word > is perhaps "market", or "marketplace of ideas". But that is precisely *not* the desired connotation! The idea is to emphasize and encourage cooperation and sharing among those bits. For example, though Bazaar, git, Subversion, and Mercurial compete "in the marketplace of ideas", they are currently engaged in hammering out the "fastimport format", a common dump format for VCS data. When they're done, you'll be able to dump a bzr database and read it into git, and get sane behavior. Bazaar and Mercurial will probably even be able to share code for dumping and undumping. How'd that happen? I'd sure like to know, because I'd like to apply it to the Emacs-XEmacs-SXEmacs etc community. But "community" doesn't tell me anything about where to look. Nor does "market". "Ecosystem" does....