Again how did you think this will work in practice? What you are effectively saying is that GNU software can not mention non-GNJ software and can not be used to read/find or in any way interact with non GNU software. Thus Eli or anyone else can not use any piece of GNU software to read or interact with non free software since non free software can't even be mentioned by GNU software. If effect Eli would have to use non-free software to find information about non-free software. I am not sure you really mean it yourself that way of if you are aware of what you are saying. You are limit GNU software to be an isolated island. ________________________________ Från: Alfred M. Szmidt Skickat: den 8 januari 2021 18:22 Till: Eli Zaretskii Kopia: dgutov@yandex.ru ; bugs@gnu.support ; arthur.miller@live.com ; rms@gnu.org ; ulm@gentoo.org ; emacs-tangents@gnu.org Ämne: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el > From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" > Cc: eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com, > rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org > Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:13 -0500 > > > You are exagerating. Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite > > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own. But it > > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you. > > But GNU software shouldn't help me in research? > > In the research of non-free software, obviously no. And that is a serious problem, because GNU maintainers need to do that quite frequently, as part of their job they do for GNU. As a GNU maintainer you can use other venues to find that information, again nobody is stopping _you_. But the GNU _project_ or GNU _software_ is not there to help you find non-free software. I do not understand what is so confusing here, how you as a person (in the capacity of a mainainter or not) wish to figure out stuff and what the GNU project links to are two entierly orthogonal issues. Its like asking why the GNU project doesn't provide information about finding good polka candy recipies, its outside the scope of the project (ignoring the issue that non-free software being immoral and unethical). And other software users and professionals are likely to do that as well, in order to study software algorithms and implementations. Let me remind you that (AFAIK) one of the main reasons for starting GNU was the inability to share ideas about software design and implementation, due to commercial entities' enforcement of a system where showing the code was prohibited. It would be ironic if the GNU project prevented its followers from exercising the same freedom, by denying us the information about where to find that source code to begin with. It doesn't prevent anyone from doing any kind of research, it is just not the place for GNU to help you in doing said research. There have been lists (e.g., the high priority list) of functionality which is lacking on free operating systems -- sometimes even mentioning very well known non-free software we (the project) wishes to replace. But when the program is unknown, one can simply list the features one wishes a program to have and not give it the extra promotion. Since if we say that a program has no free software counter part, it would be quite normal for someone to go decide that they will install the non-free program until such a day. And that would be working against the goal.