RE: Emacs Windows barebin distribution

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > The proposal from Matthias was not a proposal to poll the 
> > users.  He suggested examining the download logs to see
> > how much the barebins were picked up.
> 
> Fair enough. Still, that won't also happen on its own, and can be dead
> easy, or not, depending on how accessible the logs are for a
> sufficiently long interval of time.

Which is presumably why Mathias asked "would it be possible to check the access
logs?".  And it is why my support of the suggestion was qualified with "if
feasible", etc.  I have no idea how accessible or how accurate the logs are or
how easy it would be to check them.

> > My argument was against the reasoning that _because_ no one 
> > has spoken up here there must not be any user interest in this.
> 
> Perhaps you're misinterpreting the reasoning, and it was more like "As
> it has been broken for a long time, and we haven't received complains
> on emacs-devel (or the bug list), it is reasonable to suppose that
> there is no user interest in it."

To my knowledge, Eli's mention of it being broken came long after his argument
that I responded to.  His argument, and his dismissal of Mathias's suggestion
was just this - there is nothing here about anything being broken:

MD> > Would it be possible to check the access logs to see
MD> > how many people actually download the barebin files?
EZ> 
EZ> Since I wrote the mail to which you responded, 7 months
EZ> have passed and no one complained.  I think by now it
EZ> should be clear that no one needs this.

It is only that argument that I responded to.

> > That's a false argument and suggests a bad attitude, IMHO.
> 
> With all due respect, I think you throw that accusation a bit lightly.

I cannot know Eli's attitude, of course, which is why I said that his statement
_suggests_ such an attitude to me.  It is always a bad idea to attribute
motivations or feelings to others, I agree.

But to me the rationale he gave fits all too well with such an attitude.  That's
no proof, and anyway the point is not to prove anything about attitudes.

So let me just repeat that, regardless of what the attitudes might be here, we
should want to find out what users really use/want/need, and not just suppose
that emacs-devel activity reflects that.

Regardless of what one can guess wrt attitude, the argument/rationale itself
seems clear enough: lack of complaint here indicates that "no one needs this".

That was the argument given to reject Mathias's reasonable suggestion of a way
to see how many users "actually" use this.  And that argument was what I
objected to.

IOW, not only is it wrong (IMHO) to suppose that emacs-devel activity speaks
adequately for user needs.  It is also wrong to use that as a reason to
immediately reject a suggestion of a way to _really_ know those needs.