From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: PL support Date: Mon, 11 May 2020 23:21:37 -0400 Message-ID: References: <9mmFgzvrBwjt_n_VJyaJdXINraNi5HsGpwq-0MLeKiJA7kG2BQA4uywrzjyz7lpRS0OZDpjEi8lspOKYUA7P_QsODsDew_8nbH960G55fmY=@protonmail.com> <83pnbegsvm.fsf@gnu.org> <83imh5hby1.fsf@gnu.org> <2e4e8ce9-d857-f3e3-31cf-a40dee67bd25@yandex.ru> <83y2q1dsvh.fsf@gnu.org> <2468efa6-7dbd-8634-44cc-586bb6985f49@yandex.ru> <83pnbddrfd.fsf@gnu.org> <83k11ldpxs.fsf@gnu.org> <83imh5dnun.fsf@gnu.org> <2c09354e7994f0e61271ab0078256a9dc4202171.camel@k-7.ch> <9f1e538a-eb34-8d65-b3bb-87fd2f3690cf@dancol.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="112777"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: casouri@gmail.com, seb@k-7.ch, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Daniel Colascione Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue May 12 05:24:18 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jYLWk-000TDw-OP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 12 May 2020 05:24:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60180 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jYLWj-0000bM-Qk for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Mon, 11 May 2020 23:24:17 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:56274) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jYLUC-0005Vy-AB for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 11 May 2020 23:21:40 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:58561) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jYLUB-0005ZL-OG; Mon, 11 May 2020 23:21:39 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jYLU9-00057q-D6; Mon, 11 May 2020 23:21:37 -0400 In-Reply-To: <9f1e538a-eb34-8d65-b3bb-87fd2f3690cf@dancol.org> (message from Daniel Colascione on Sun, 10 May 2020 20:07:27 -0700) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:249933 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > If someone downloads Emacs and > it doesn't even approximate a modern editing experience out-of-the-box, > people are going to use other, less-free or non-free tools. Just because a different way is "modern" does not make it morally legitimate. Especially not in computing! The modern way of doing computing is to use apps on a smartphone, each spying on you for a server -- and that is almost always unjust. It takes special care to do it in a way that isn't unjust. > The moral > purity of a program doesn't matter if it has no impact, and a program > with no users has no impact. The assumptions in the concept of "impact" do not fit the free software movement. That word assumes that we accumulate a certain amount of capacity to have impact, which we can then use against against whatever target we choose -- like ammunition in a shooter game. That may be valid for some kinds of goals. Especially those, such as profit, that can be achieved with popularity regardless of how that popularity is achieved. But it is not valid for what we do. The impact we aim for in the GNU Project consists of leading people to move away from nonfree software and to understand how it is unjust. To achieve this, we have to act in accord with our moral stand, in a way that is visibly firm and sincere. To attract more users by yielding on the moral plane would be self-defeating, since that would undermine our fitness to teach what we aim to teach them. If we yield partially, we have to do that in a way compatible with purity. Therefore, we need to be very careful about tolerating nonfree software in any way. Even tolerating supporting Emacs on nonfree systems is problematical. We do it, but we had to design careful limits for it, so that we can yield in ways that dont cancel our moral purity, rather than in ways that would do so. I address that in another message, posted with this one, which talks about walking the ridge between two cliffs. > You can instead bundle known-good versions of > external tools with Emacs and run them in a controlled way from > filesystem locations that Emacs controls. Downloading revisions of these > tools that hash to entries on an Emacs whitelist is equivalent. This is ok in carefully chosen cases, precisely because it is controlled. -- 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)