Re: Emacs Webapp/Plugin

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> Chromium is a free browser.
> Chrome is a nonfree browser.

Right.

> Because we don't have the full source code of Google Chrome,
> we can't change it and we can't even tell what it does.
> The fact that parts of it are the same as another free program
> doesn't alter the problems.

Indeed, but that seems irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.

>     My understanding was that although binary distributed by google wasn't
>     free, because it includes various bells and whistles implemented with
>     non-free libraries (e.g. video decoding ...?), the guts of the browser
>     _is_ actually free software,
>
> A combination of free code and nonfree code is nonfree.
> The free parts don't make the nonfree parts ok.

Nobody is saying they do.

What I'm trying to say is:

If chromium and chrome have the same app/plugin interface, then making
Emacs (or anything else) use that interface is targeting an interface
shared by _both_ free and non-free systems.

In that case, objections that "we shouldn't add this support because
it supports a non-free system" are not correct -- doing so would
support (completely) free systems as well, and that seems to make the
case for adding such support much stronger.

-miles

-- 
Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.