Re: Issues with emacs

[ken <gebser@mousecar.com>]

On 06/23/2012 07:49 PM Dan Espen wrote:
> Tom<adatgyujto@gmail.com>  writes:
>
>> Bastien<bzg<at>  gnu.org>  writes:
>>
>>>
>>> The good news is that, whether Emacs users are a dying breed
>>> or not, the only remedy to this hypothetical issue is to have
>>> more Emacs developers.
>>>
>>
>> But how to have more developers. I see 3 possibilites:
>>
>> 1. Motivate more users to be volunteer developers? Any idea how
>> to do that?
>>
>> 2. Attracting more users. Volunteer developers are some small
>> percent of the active user base, so if Emacs can be mode more
>> attractive to users then the bigger user base will bring more
>> volunteer developers too. The problem is in order to be more
>> attractive Emacs needs new features which other editors/IDEs have
>> and which make users to choose those editors/IDEs instead of
>> Emacs, and to implement those more competitive features Emacs
>> needs more developers.
>>
>> 3. Crowdfunding. If we don't have enough volunteer developers
>> then we need to motivate developers with something else. For
>> example, paying for their work. For this model to work there
>> should be some public exposure of this idea, so potential
>> developers know they can potentially make a living while
>> contributing to Emacs. This kind of public exposure could be done
>> by RMS who could mention this development model in every
>> interview he gives. He has the voice which can reach lots of
>> ears, including potential developer ears.
>
> 4. Have a whole bunch of missing functionality.

5. Make the elisp documentation and tutorials so easy and fun to learn 
that tons of people actually want to write code.