Re: Release plans

[Johannes Weiner <hannes@saeurebad.de>]

Hi,

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    >    Freedom should never stand over software quality and usability.
>    >
>    > Freedom must always stand over software quality and usability, without
>    > it we cannot improve the software in question.
>
>    Not when your definition of freedom forbids certain improvements.
>
> Free software does not forbid any kinds of improvment.  It explicitly
> protects that right.
>
>    Emacs has still no support to load shared libraries during runtime and
>    IIRC it was rejected back then due to political reasons.  I call this
>    crippling.
>
> If a feature allows someone to subjugate the rights of a computer
> user, then it is better not to implement it.

You always assume people are stupid.  Please don't do that, it really
offends me.

The only way a user can become enslaved is by not having a choice.  If
there are free alternatives and someone choses to use the non-free
version, this is not the fault of the non-free software but the users
own free decision.

> The Emacs maintainers decided that this feature would do a greater
> disservice to users than having it included, so they decided not to.
> It is no different to rejecting a feature because it does something
> annoying, you may call it crippling, but it is just good managment of
> a project.

First of all, I don't consider dictatorship a good management style.

Second, if that feature annoys someone BUT she has the possibility to
disable it, there is no problem with it.

Some people are annoyed by the transient mark, some are not.  Even if
all maintainers would find that feature annoying, it would be a good
thing to have it anyway for some people might find it useful.

	Hannes