Re: Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > My thought was that what Emacs needs before all else is more
  > users.  Period.

We would like more people to use Emacs, but we should never think
that we _need_ more users.  When developers of a free software package
think they _need_ more users, it is a lever that can be used
to push them into bad decisions.

When some people use Emacs, they are getting benefit from our work.
We are glad it benefits them, we intended it to benefit users, and we
hope to make it benefit them more, but we don't _need_ them to be
pleased with our work.  We're the ones who did them a favor -- not
vice versa.

Likewise, when some people don't use Emacs, that's their loss, not our
loss.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.