Re: Brand new clojure support in Emacs ;-)

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Bozhidar.

On Sun, Sep 03, 2023 at 10:33:57 +0200, Bozhidar Batsov wrote:
>    Hi everyone!

>    I had decided at first to ignore this thread, given I'm on vacation
>    this week, but its overall tone and directly really forced me to write
>    something here. (I have to admit I'm extremely upset while writing this
>    email)

I, personally, can understand that.  I have been dismayed by some of the
posts posted by my colleagues on Emacs in the last week or two.  Although
I'm replying to you, the sentiments in this post are really intended for
my fellow hackers on emacs-devel.

Over the last years your team has produced a well liked and well used
Clojure mode for Emacs.  This has involved setting up and maintaining a
development system, which is no small job in itself.  You don't want to
disturb this system by integrating clojure-mode into the Emacs core or
even GNU ELPA.  I don't fully understand the reasons in detail, but I do
see it's not up to me, as it's not me who's put in all the work over the
years.

I don't understand why we need to have a Clojure mode in the Emacs core,
particularly one which would be intended to compete with the existing
clojure-mode.  It seems to me to be entirely within the spirit of free
software for independent projects such as clojure-mode to spring up and
flourish outside the control and direction of the central project.

And even if Emacs were to develop its own competing Clojure mode (which I
say it should not), it MUST have a name of its own and not create
confusion by re-using name of the existing mode.  Such reuse would also
not be displaying respect for the achievements of your team.  We have a
precedent here, with two perl modes in Emacs.  One is called perl-mode,
the other cperl-mode.  As far as I'm aware, they don't get confused.

I hope all these matters can get settled satisfactorally in the coming
days.  But, whatever, please enjoy the rest of your holiday!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).