Re: AW: Fwd: CEDET sync

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> David Kastrup writes:
>
>  > Worms may wriggle, too.  The question is whether there is a central
>  > agency moving forward.
>
> Of course *we* have a central agency moving forward.  It's called
> "Emacs", and it has bright red taillights we can follow through the
> fog.
>
> It's *you* guys who have to *worry* about being a pack of wriggling
> worms, not us.[1]  Worse, your development is constrained by political
> considerations that have saddled you with a 1990s bug tracker and a
> VCS that gives 1980s performance while satisfying the requirement to
> support 1970s workflows.  Not to mention massive internal obstacles to
> benefitting from work done by anybody who doesn't actively pledge
> allegiance to Emacs. :-(

A copyright assignment is not written out to Emacs, and it is not a
pledge of allegiance, most certainly not to Emacs.

A main consideration for GNU software is not to leave GNU software
behind for short-term benefits.

It may at times be a nuisance for GNU subprojects, but it certainly has
helped in completing the GNU software landscape from isolated programs
to completely free systems.

If the FSF's sole goal were to make Emacs the best editor to be found,
some decisions in its development might have been made differently.  You
might call them "political considerations", but it is not like they are
anything new.  The GNU project has been shaped and motivated by
political decisions for the sake of creating a workground compatible
with a certain set of morals and views.

People with quite different focus and goals still profit: that is a
consequence of the goals.  But their profit is a side-effect that may
simplify work and things, but which is not ultimately what keeps the
system as such going any better than less free alternatives.

I am quite annoyed by some decisions and their effects at times.  Sure.
But I am not so stupid not to see what long-term effects they have made
possible in the past ultimately.

-- 
David Kastrup