From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: RE: display-buffer-alist simplifications Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:35:32 +0900 Message-ID: <87sjohjb8b.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <87mxgem09k.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <871ux2nsrw.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <4E3AA5DA.8030403@gmx.at> <87mxfnn414.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <4E3D41F2.8060801@gmx.at> <4E3FA812.3080009@gmx.at> <87zkjkb572.fsf@mail.jurta.org> <4E3FD5ED.5000206@gmx.at> <4E412E2D.90908@gmx.at> <4E422ECA.2020207@gmx.at> <4E43A253.9040404@gmx.at> <4E59F6D1.5060800@gmx.at> <4E5BE2B9.9030307@gmx.at> <87zkiqicdo.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <87hb4ythby.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <59CE5DD60A8D4C529BD3DC23524FB52B@us.oracle.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1314840482 20946 80.91.229.12 (1 Sep 2011 01:28:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 01:28:02 +0000 (UTC) Cc: 'Juri Linkov' , 'martin rudalics' , 'Chong Yidong' , 'Stefan Monnier' , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Drew Adams" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Sep 01 03:27:57 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Qyw4R-0000f1-94 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:27:55 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:52003 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qyw4Q-0002d5-HW for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:27:54 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:35716) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qyw4N-0002ba-LN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:27:52 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qyw4M-00031s-Jp for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:27:51 -0400 Original-Received: from mgmt1.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.223]:44991) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Qyw4M-00031Z-2o for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:27:50 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt1.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB7F73FA0554; Thu, 1 Sep 2011 10:27:41 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 1BE0D1A3363; Thu, 1 Sep 2011 10:35:33 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <59CE5DD60A8D4C529BD3DC23524FB52B@us.oracle.com> X-Mailer: VM 8.1.93a under 21.5 (beta31) "ginger" 17bcc2aab111 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 130.158.97.223 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:143673 Archived-At: Drew Adams writes: > Why not? What real deadline does free software development have? Self-imposed ones. There are things that are real that are intangible, as someone who works with software experiences every day. > There might be practical limits such as the lost opportunity of > someone not being available to help after some date, but it's not > like you have to deal with contracts and paying customers. > > Let's not exaggerate. You can do anything you want wrt development > schedules. So can a commercial enterprise, and many failures occur as a result. But those failures aren't important per se, except to owners; there is some friction, of course, but the productive resources which have been freed are reasonably soon applied in new, and on average more productive, activities. The real problem here is that users (aka customers), both current and potential, are suffering while the company languishes. The same real problem occurs in a non-profit. If clients are not served promptly, something is being wasted. It's just that measuring "what is wasted" and "the right thing to do" is much harder if you don't have profit as a measure, and trading off "different what"s is much harder. That doesn't mean non-profit activities are a bad idea; just that socialism sucks as a management tool. Still, that's no reason for abdicating management entirely. > Which is why features that are not ready get pulled from a release. > But the timing of releases is typically based on concerns and > constraints (e.g. commercial) that Emacs is for the most part not > burdened with. Actually, the only such concern that Emacs is free of is labor quitting because its pay is in arrears. But even there, releases are an incentive for many volunteer hackers. Seeing your code published is one example. The other concerns that commercial enterprises worry about are merely made much harder to measure in a non-profit because of lack of concrete management information like "revenue" and "cost", leading to inefficiencies in decision-making (aka "bike-shedding"). You pride yourself on human factors, Drew. Economics (and I don't mean "commerce") is one. You should learn more about it (at least to the point where you realize that there's more to it than "contracts and paying customers".)