Emacs is not a research project

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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  > Emacs from 40 years ago created a lot of innovations  that still shine
  > in today's world. Given that those innovations happened in a world
  > that distinctly lacked the  hardware ans the associated UI affordances
  >  that we have today; how might Emacs create the next round of
  >  innovation that will shine for the next 40 years?

Beyond simply being good to use, the overarching goal of the GNU
system, including GNU Emacs, is to give users freedom to control their
own computing.

Compared with freedom, innovation is a side issue.  Our society
generally overemphasizes innovation as a goal, often as a way of
distracting users from questions of their own freedom.

If in working on Emacs you think of a useful new feature and you
implement it in GNU Emacs, we will appreciate that innovation.  But we
won't measure the success of our work by how much the
user-disrespecting nonfree programs of 30 years from now are
influenced by our work.  We aim to replace them with free software,
not to enhance them.

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