Re: Lightweight, C-only implementation of Emacs

[Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net>]

On 03/08/2020 15:52, Amin Bandali wrote:
> Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 3:56 PM Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 Aug 2020, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Well, it is feature complete then.
>>>>>
>>>>> The same is true for most of the lightweight implementations in the
>>>>> list. Why would that be a problem?
>>>
>>>> "I do not recommend it use."
>>>
>>> *shrug* It compiles and works, and upstream appears to be responsive.
>>> No good reason for dropping it from a distro (and breaking existing
>>> users' workflows).
>>
>> *shrug* The author told you not to use it. What don't you understand
>> about the statement?
> 
> That's not how free software works.  The author is of course free to
> make recommendations about their software, and the community is free to
> decide to whether take the author up on that recommendation or not.

"I do not recommend its use" from an author abut the free software they
wrote has many possible meanings. Among those: "use it but please don't
bother me if it breaks and eats your data", "I know it has (serious)
flaws that I don't want even think about", "I am very tired of
supporting this piece of software, but I continue doing so for spirit of
service toward those (hopefully few) that still depend on it. Please
stop using it so I can enjoy doing something else".

Of course no one can forbid you to use the software the author himself
deprecated, but I think it would be nice to the author to follow their
recommendation and look for alternatives, or pick up or share the burden
of maintaining it.

I don't know if any of this applies to Zile, but maybe inquiring,
preferably in private, with the author and maintainer would be a good
idea before putting it in a list of suggested software (I admit I
haven't looked at the list debated here, thus I don't know if this applies).

Cheers,
Dan