Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[david.reitter@gmail.com]

Jay Belanger:

> For people who to whom the free software movement
> is important, improvements to the Mac and/or Windows version which
> cannot be folded back into the main version would not be a good thing,
> it would seem.

I don't think we disagree. But my thinking is that having free software
with a high degree of usability at least on a partially proprietary
system (such as Mac OS X) is better than having the less "lickable"
interface at all, i.e. on no system. So the technique is to develop
stuff on the partially proprietary system and port it to the
ideologically less questionable free system. Of course, we'll do so in
a way that doesn't preclude us from porting it back, even though we
won't do all the work right now (e.g. legal business). Anything else
has only been alledged by other participants in this discussion.

How far people want to go with this port is their business. As long as
I'm not getting paid for it, I said, hey, happy to do development work,
happy to document sources, but not happy to push various people to sign
certain contracts and not happy to accept technologically inferior
solutions just because they aren't available for all operating systems
yet. People draw the line at some point, and we all need to respect
that. I've had a dozen people tell me in the past year that they can't
contribute or can't contribute more because they don't have time. My
initial collaborator had to bail out because he's got kids, wife, and a
business and these things simply had priority. You have to accept that,
say thanks for your help and your contribution, and move on. Reacting
with hostility just because someone isn't willing to contribute
further, or contribute all that the ideology behind the organization
providing this mailing list requires will only make matters worse.