Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> Richard Stallman writes:
>
>  > Reciprocity is an aspect of the point of the GNU GPL, but its main
>  > point is _defending users' freedom_.
>
> Conceded.
>
>  > With the GNU GPL (and copyleft in general), we make sure that all
>  > copies of all versions of our code _respect users' freedom_.
>
> That's a nice euphemism for *dis*respect for the users.  You treat
> them like children,

Are we still talking about a world where the dominant government form is
representative democracy (in the U.S., the self-declared bastion of
freedom, even filtered through an additional layer of electors) rather
than anarchy?  The closest you can get to an actual democracy nowadays
probably is Switzerland, and it's not like that kind of system would be
popular elsewhere.  And it's still to a good degree based on
representatives.

A large part of public life is regulated by laws, conventions, taxation
simply because people cannot be bothered to think about the consequences
of their actions.

The GNU project does not treat its users like children, but it also does
not bet its fate on everybody behaving in a responsible manner by
default.  If it did, there would not have been the GPL to start with.
Or even the necessity to start the GNU project at all.

> fearing they will abuse their freedom by choosing bondage to
> proprietary software rather than choosing less capable free software,
> or even just saying no to the unique benefits of some proprietary
> software.

The GNU project is not democratic.  The FSF sets and pursues its
policies and everyone is free to join or not for whatever reason he
wants.  That does not mean that the FSF is under any obligation to cater
for any particular reason.

Indeed, it has remained remarkably constant in its original goals and
aims even though users of GNU software have easily increased more than a
millionfold from GNU's starts.

Of course, this attracts attention leading to alternative options with
watered-down guarantees.  And their availability in turn impacts the
adoption numbers of GNU.

Of course, an economist will cry "_now_ is the time to sell out, it
doesn't get any better than that".  Which actually tends to be the end
result of almost every revolution, sometimes by eating its leaders
alive, sometimes waiting for them to fade from life or significance
first.

-- 
David Kastrup