My resignation from Emacs development

My resignation from Emacs development

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Emacs.

I'm resigning my position as Emacs contributor.

The immediate reason is that, as maintainer of CC Mode, CC Mode's
symbols, its names, were taken by Emacs and used for other purposes
without informing me, much less consulting me.  That makes my position as
CC Mode maintainer here untenable.

Eli Zaretskii and I have had extensive discussions, both in public and in
private email, over the last week or so, but we have been unable to reach
any satisfactory compromise solution.

Names are important.  They have power.  To take somebody's/somthing's
name and misuse it is an exercise of aggression.  Try using "Emacs" or
even "free software" to mean something different, and see just how
quickly you would hear back from Richard Stallman.  This misuse of CC
Mode's "trademarks", the symbols `c-mode', `c++-mode', and perhaps
`c-or-c++-mode', is just such an act of aggression.

These symbols have been appropriated by Emacs to mean "the current
preferred mode for C", etc., rather than C Mode, C++ Mode etc.  In
certain circumstances, in particular, in Local Variables: sections and
auto-mode-alist, there is now no longer any way unambiguously to specify
C Mode or C++ Mode.  Up till recently ("\\.myc\\'" . c-mode) in
auto-mode-alist meant C Mode, and would have had the effect of
auto-loading CC Mode, if needed, and running C Mode.

The change took place in the commit for bug#69191 "New var
`major-mode-remap-defaults`, for packages".  It sounds so innocent, but
is an extremely bad solution for whatever problem (unspecified in the
commit message) it was intended to solve.  A major mode using it changes
the interfaces of other libraries in an uncontrolled way.  This is not
good software engineering.

This bug was raised and committed by Stefan Monnier.  Despite the fact
that the bug fix directly impinged upon CC Mode, and there was even a
change to cc-mode.el in the patch, he failed even to inform me.  The only
two modes substantially affected by this change were ruby-mode and CC
Mode, and it is clear that Dmitry Gutov, maintainer of ruby-mode, was
aware of the change.  Had I known of this proposal, I would certainly
have objected to it.  Stefan is intelligent enough to have realised this,
and maybe his avoidance of open discussion was motivated by this.

Bug#69191 was a big change.  In Emacs, we have a convention whereby big
changes are discussed openly on emacs-devel and a consensus reached
before the change is made.  Stefan Monnier has regularly violated this
convention, possibly believing that his ideas for Emacs are so good as to
be beyond question.  Any attempt to question his ideas is likely to be
met by evasive non-answers, if any response at all is forthcoming.  I
could give several paragraphs worth of justification for these
assertions, but I think everybody here knows I am right.

In Emacs there is also a convention of treating eachother with respect on
the mailing lists.  Sadly this convention is superficial, and seems only
to mean things like not using swear words.  The truly contemptuous
communication style, this evasive non-answering, seems to be regarded as
acceptable.  I suggest that this change.

Stefan's habit of making big changes in Emacs without seeking consensus
is at the heart of why I am resigning.  These changes have caused Emacs a
lot of damage over the years and have caused other contributors,
including me, extra work and difficulty.  Stefan is a Jekyll-and-Hyde
character.  On the one hand, he's a very capable hacker, and is always
ready to help others with technical questions.  On the other hand, as
mentioned, he is contemptuous of the Emacs conventions, and unlike
Richard and Eli, does not have the gift of knowing what the Right Thing
is.

I strongly recommend that Stefan somehow be reigned in and required to
observe Emacs's conventions about open discussion and courteous
communication.  As I mentioned, his violations of these are at the core
of why I feel unable to continue contributing to Emacs.

I will shortly be unsubscribing from emacs-devel.  I intend to carry on
maintaining stand alone CC Mode, and I'm prepared to deal with any CC
Mode issues which arise in Emacs.  Please post these to
bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.

It just remains to say that my respect for Eli and the other maintainers
remains undiminished, and that I wish all of them and the Emacs project
all success in the future.

--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 15:13:18 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> 
> Hello, Emacs.
> 
> I'm resigning my position as Emacs contributor.

I regret very much this decision of yours, and urge you to reconsider.
Your many-year contributions to Emacs in general and to CC Mode in
particular are greatly appreciated and will be sorely missed if you
decide to go with this decision.

> Stefan's habit of making big changes in Emacs without seeking consensus
> is at the heart of why I am resigning.  These changes have caused Emacs a
> lot of damage over the years and have caused other contributors,
> including me, extra work and difficulty.  Stefan is a Jekyll-and-Hyde
> character.  On the one hand, he's a very capable hacker, and is always
> ready to help others with technical questions.  On the other hand, as
> mentioned, he is contemptuous of the Emacs conventions, and unlike
> Richard and Eli, does not have the gift of knowing what the Right Thing
> is.

I must say that I disagree with this assessment of what Stefan did in
that case, and don't find anything unbecoming in his behavior, neither
in general nor in that particular case.  Yes, that change should have
been discussed more thoroughly; no, Stefan didn't do anything that
doesn't happen here every other day, and certainly didn't have any
malicious intentions when he installed that change.

> It just remains to say that my respect for Eli and the other maintainers
> remains undiminished, and that I wish all of them and the Emacs project
> all success in the future.

And the same to you.  But please do reconsider.

My resignation from Emacs development

[Christopher Dimech]

The claim that using free software or its associated names constitutes
aggression is fundamentally flawed. Aggression involves hostile actions
meant to cause harm, and using names in a way not intended by their
original authors is neither violent nor malicious.

One of the key principles of free software is that software should be
modifiable, and free to use in any context.  Restricting how names are
used run counter to the ethos to empower users and developers, not to
limit or control their language or expressions.

Although the approach should be reconsidered, there should be some
thoughtful conversation among the community.  Avoiding tones of contempt
or disregard for the foundations laid by previous contributors.

For instance, I agree with you that ("\\.myc\\'" . c-mode) in auto-mode-alist
should mean C Mode.  Although C Mode would mean the emacs preferred mode.
Still, your mode name can be changed for those who want to apply an alternative
mode.  Changing the mode should be a straightforward thing.



> Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 3:13 AM
> From: "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de>
> To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: My resignation from Emacs development
>
>
> Hello, Emacs.
>
> I'm resigning my position as Emacs contributor.
>
> The immediate reason is that, as maintainer of CC Mode, CC Mode's
> symbols, its names, were taken by Emacs and used for other purposes
> without informing me, much less consulting me.  That makes my position as
> CC Mode maintainer here untenable.
>
> Eli Zaretskii and I have had extensive discussions, both in public and in
> private email, over the last week or so, but we have been unable to reach
> any satisfactory compromise solution.
>
> Names are important.  They have power.  To take somebody's/somthing's
> name and misuse it is an exercise of aggression.  Try using "Emacs" or
> even "free software" to mean something different, and see just how
> quickly you would hear back from Richard Stallman.  This misuse of CC
> Mode's "trademarks", the symbols `c-mode', `c++-mode', and perhaps
> `c-or-c++-mode', is just such an act of aggression.
>
> These symbols have been appropriated by Emacs to mean "the current
> preferred mode for C", etc., rather than C Mode, C++ Mode etc.  In
> certain circumstances, in particular, in Local Variables: sections and
> auto-mode-alist, there is now no longer any way unambiguously to specify
> C Mode or C++ Mode.  Up till recently ("\\.myc\\'" . c-mode) in
> auto-mode-alist meant C Mode, and would have had the effect of
> auto-loading CC Mode, if needed, and running C Mode.
>
> The change took place in the commit for bug#69191 "New var
> `major-mode-remap-defaults`, for packages".  It sounds so innocent, but
> is an extremely bad solution for whatever problem (unspecified in the
> commit message) it was intended to solve.  A major mode using it changes
> the interfaces of other libraries in an uncontrolled way.  This is not
> good software engineering.
>
> This bug was raised and committed by Stefan Monnier.  Despite the fact
> that the bug fix directly impinged upon CC Mode, and there was even a
> change to cc-mode.el in the patch, he failed even to inform me.  The only
> two modes substantially affected by this change were ruby-mode and CC
> Mode, and it is clear that Dmitry Gutov, maintainer of ruby-mode, was
> aware of the change.  Had I known of this proposal, I would certainly
> have objected to it.  Stefan is intelligent enough to have realised this,
> and maybe his avoidance of open discussion was motivated by this.
>
> Bug#69191 was a big change.  In Emacs, we have a convention whereby big
> changes are discussed openly on emacs-devel and a consensus reached
> before the change is made.  Stefan Monnier has regularly violated this
> convention, possibly believing that his ideas for Emacs are so good as to
> be beyond question.  Any attempt to question his ideas is likely to be
> met by evasive non-answers, if any response at all is forthcoming.  I
> could give several paragraphs worth of justification for these
> assertions, but I think everybody here knows I am right.
>
> In Emacs there is also a convention of treating eachother with respect on
> the mailing lists.  Sadly this convention is superficial, and seems only
> to mean things like not using swear words.  The truly contemptuous
> communication style, this evasive non-answering, seems to be regarded as
> acceptable.  I suggest that this change.
>
> Stefan's habit of making big changes in Emacs without seeking consensus
> is at the heart of why I am resigning.  These changes have caused Emacs a
> lot of damage over the years and have caused other contributors,
> including me, extra work and difficulty.  Stefan is a Jekyll-and-Hyde
> character.  On the one hand, he's a very capable hacker, and is always
> ready to help others with technical questions.  On the other hand, as
> mentioned, he is contemptuous of the Emacs conventions, and unlike
> Richard and Eli, does not have the gift of knowing what the Right Thing
> is.
>
> I strongly recommend that Stefan somehow be reigned in and required to
> observe Emacs's conventions about open discussion and courteous
> communication.  As I mentioned, his violations of these are at the core
> of why I feel unable to continue contributing to Emacs.
>
> I will shortly be unsubscribing from emacs-devel.  I intend to carry on
> maintaining stand alone CC Mode, and I'm prepared to deal with any CC
> Mode issues which arise in Emacs.  Please post these to
> bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.
>
> It just remains to say that my respect for Eli and the other maintainers
> remains undiminished, and that I wish all of them and the Emacs project
> all success in the future.
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>

Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   I'm resigning my position as Emacs contributor.

:-( I hope you reconsider, and that Eli, Stefan and the rest of the
Emacs maintainers find a better middle ground -- CC Mode is amazing --
I too think that "c-mode" should mean CC Mode and nothing else.  This
just all smells of the debacle of pcase...

Some _other_ mechanism to pick between CC Mode and c-ts-mode ... or
whatever should exist, while respecting others namespaces.

If one was to introduce a dired-ts .. and M-x dired "magically"
decides between one or the other, people would be just as angry.

Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 217 bytes --]

On Wed, Nov 20, 2024 at 03:13:18PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> 
> Hello, Emacs.
> 
> I'm resigning my position as Emacs contributor.

[...]

I, for one, will (would?) miss you dearly :-(

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi Alan,

On 20/11/2024 17:13, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> I'm resigning my position as Emacs contributor.

I would be sorry to see you leave.

> This bug was raised and committed by Stefan Monnier.  Despite the fact
> that the bug fix directly impinged upon CC Mode, and there was even a
> change to cc-mode.el in the patch, he failed even to inform me.  The only
> two modes substantially affected by this change were ruby-mode and CC
> Mode, and it is clear that Dmitry Gutov, maintainer of ruby-mode, was
> aware of the change.

To clarify on this: I've been made aware of the change, just like other 
contributors, from reading the bug#69191 submission. And from my POV it 
didn't make things worse, globally - but reshaped existing problems. And 
it did improve some things - like ones that I had myself submitted a 
proposal previously (https://debbugs.gnu.org/68246#283), which was 
collectively rejected.

To be fair, I have less of a reason to take it personally due to less 
focus on particular major mode(s), and less years of tenure as well.

Speaking of other solutions, maybe you'll want to check out the patch in 
the nearby thread: 
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2024-11/msg00515.html

That scheme could make major-mode-remap-defaults unnecessary for 
c-ts-mode, or in any case remove the need for the corresponding 
overrides in CC Mode. I'm not sure what migration path should be 
selected, though.

Best,
Dmitry

Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[Stefan Kangas]

Hi Alan,

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> The immediate reason is that, as maintainer of CC Mode, CC Mode's
> symbols, its names, were taken by Emacs and used for other purposes
> without informing me, much less consulting me.  That makes my position as
> CC Mode maintainer here untenable.

That is highly regrettable.  You are a valued member of our team, and
it's sad to see you go.

> These symbols have been appropriated by Emacs to mean "the current
> preferred mode for C", etc., rather than C Mode, C++ Mode etc.  In
> certain circumstances, in particular, in Local Variables: sections and
> auto-mode-alist, there is now no longer any way unambiguously to specify
> C Mode or C++ Mode.  Up till recently ("\\.myc\\'" . c-mode) in
> auto-mode-alist meant C Mode, and would have had the effect of
> auto-loading CC Mode, if needed, and running C Mode.

From my point of view, we are still in early days when it comes to the
new tree-sitter modes.  For starters, we do not recommend them by
default, and some language modes are also not yet ready for prime-time.
I'm not even sure that a majority of distros ship the feature in a
useful form yet, but I didn't really check.

AFAIU, the purpose of `major-mode-remap-alist` is to provide a mechanism
to respect what users want.  Where there is disagrement, it concerns the
technical details of how to best achieve that, and to which extent we
should set things up automatically based on indicators such as the user
actions "running a mode", "loading a file", or "running a command".

But the feature has teething problems.  My understanding was that we
agreed in Bug#74339 that the situation in Emacs 30 is already better
than in Emacs 29, and that we will continue working on this in Emacs 31.

For example, it has been suggested that we should replace the automatic
setting of `major-mode-remap-defaults` with an entirely new command like
`foo-ts-mode-prefer`, that would be used as the canonical indication
that a user wants to use the tree-sitter mode everywhere.  There surely
exist other options that we could evaluate also.

For this reason, I hope that there is still room to reconsider your
decision to resign.

> Stefan's habit of making big changes in Emacs without seeking consensus
> is at the heart of why I am resigning.  These changes have caused Emacs a
> lot of damage over the years and have caused other contributors,
> including me, extra work and difficulty.  Stefan is a Jekyll-and-Hyde
> character.  On the one hand, he's a very capable hacker, and is always
> ready to help others with technical questions.  On the other hand, as
> mentioned, he is contemptuous of the Emacs conventions, and unlike
> Richard and Eli, does not have the gift of knowing what the Right Thing
> is.

This is where I have to disagree quite strongly.  I find the charges
directed at Stefan Monnier both unfair and one-sided.  I fail to see
which of his actions or words that could possibly warrant such a
negative interpretation, or that would justify assuming any ill intent.

I have to agree with Eli.  Although it would, in hindsight, certainly
have been better to discuss these particular changes in more detail in
advance, I don't see that he has done anything very unusual or different
from what most other core contributors do on a routine basis.

I also do not appreciate where it veers into ad-hominem, such as talking
about Stefan M's character, etc.  That is strictly off-topic here, as
you well know, and does not reach the usual high level of standard that
one would expect from one of your posts.

Can we please all remember that we share the same goal here; that we all
want to help advance Emacs and free software?

> I will shortly be unsubscribing from emacs-devel.  I intend to carry on
> maintaining stand alone CC Mode, and I'm prepared to deal with any CC
> Mode issues which arise in Emacs.  Please post these to
> bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.
>
> It just remains to say that my respect for Eli and the other maintainers
> remains undiminished, and that I wish all of them and the Emacs project
> all success in the future.

Thanks for continuing to maintain CC-mode, and likewise.

I hope that you will seriously consider the idea to reverse your
decision to quit Emacs development.  It would be much better if we could
find a way where we can all continue working together.  I'd suggest
giving the idea at least a couple of days to fully consider, though I'll
of course respect your decision either way.

Meanwhile, if there is anything I can do to help improve things, please
feel free to reach out.  Thanks again for all your work on Emacs.

Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[Gerd Möllmann]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> I will shortly be unsubscribing from emacs-devel.  I intend to carry on
> maintaining stand alone CC Mode, and I'm prepared to deal with any CC
> Mode issues which arise in Emacs.  Please post these to
> bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.

Thanks Alan, for everything.

Will you make a package out of cc-mode, or should one use the Hg repo?

Re: My resignation from Emacs development

[Gerd Möllmann]

Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> writes:

> One of the key principles of free software is that software should be
> modifiable, and free to use in any context.  Restricting how names are
> used run counter to the ethos to empower users and developers, not to
> limit or control their language or expressions.

Seriously?