Sean O'Rourke writes: > What if we included shared library loading in GNU Emacs to see if > anyone tried to use it to abuse the GPL? If so, we could remove > it, and let the abusers develop a fork. Since the shared library > patch is already out there and there are no such forks, I doubt > there would be a problem. I also doubt it would be a problem. Given the present development climate, if someone is going to create a non-free "value-add" for a development environment, I think that they are much more likely to do so as an Eclipse plugin than as a non-free extension module for Emacs. It may not be a pleasant picture for widespread Emacs adoption, but it is the state of things these days. Thus, adding dynamic loading support would make Emacs more flexible for its users, and I would be rather surprised if people actually abused that feature to make non-free value-adds (other than the X/Refactory folks possibly wanting to turn their product into an in-process dynamic load). The added possibilities are significant. The libotr possibility has been mentioned, and I could see cases for others. Most immediately coming to mind is an SQLite extension and accompanying nnsqlite Gnus mail backend. - Michael -- mouse, n: A device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type. Confused by the strange files? I cryptographically sign my messages. For more information see .