From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Some ideas with Emacs Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2019 23:41:15 -0500 Message-ID: References: <87d0dbszjn.fsf@mbork.pl> <8736e4titj.fsf@mbork.pl> <871rtoti9w.fsf@mbork.pl> <87v9qysxbb.fsf@mbork.pl> <87tv6hq62w.fsf@mbork.pl> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="161529"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" Cc: van@scratch.space, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Marcin Borkowski Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 05 05:41:30 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1icixF-000fnR-H4 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 05 Dec 2019 05:41:29 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:49914 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1icixD-0008OK-F6 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 04 Dec 2019 23:41:27 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:33622) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1icix6-0008Mw-4L for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Dec 2019 23:41:21 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:34514) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1icix2-0005do-9C; Wed, 04 Dec 2019 23:41:16 -0500 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1icix1-0006kR-Dt; Wed, 04 Dec 2019 23:41:15 -0500 In-Reply-To: <87tv6hq62w.fsf@mbork.pl> (message from Marcin Borkowski on Wed, 04 Dec 2019 01:37:11 +0100) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 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" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:243138 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > Elisp Reference is documentation. It contains everything you need to > understand Elisp. Its purpose is to _teach Elisp_. I think I agree > that documentation to free software should (in the moral sense) be free. > Elisp Intro is _not_ documentation, it is a textbook. I think that that definition of "documentation" is too narrow. Back when companies provided manuals along with their software, and people generally read these manuals, the manuals generally included introductions and reference manuals. For each component, there was an introduction manual that you read to learn how to use it, and a reference manual you would use to check specific points once you know, generally, how to use it. I wanted to provide this level of documentation for the GNU system, but the amount of work would have been prohibitive. To reduce it, I developed the method whereby a manual starts out as an introduction and then changes into a reference. This generally requires a certain amount of duplication, but much less than 100% duplication, so it results in big savings of size and of work. Emacs Lisp is a partial exception. Because Bob Chassell wrote the intro, the main manual doesn't have to start out in an introductory manner. However, the Emacs Manual does start out in an introductory manner. It is written so you can read it straight through and learn to edit with Emacs. Turning to the broader ethical issue, I think that _all_ textbooks, indeed all educational resources, ought to be free -- because they exist to be _used_ for a practical job: f teaching or learning a subject. A calculus textbook is not documentation, because the subject it teaches is not how to use some tool or appliance. But I think the two are similar in the basic moralily of the cases. The memoir you proposed writing is not an educational resource. It would exist mainly to show your personal point of view, not for practical use. Reading it could be interesting, but it would not be _using_ the memoir. That is why I reach different conclusions about the memoir. > Now what I've written above is not strictly and logically correct: > formally, you don't _ever_ need documentation for free software, because > you have the source code. Our judgments of right and wront for _our_ conduct have to take account of its likely effects, and that depends on the world we are in. If our users were superhuman, they might not need any sort of manuals -- they would read the source code and that would be enough. They might not even need to get software from anyone: a smart enough being could write for itself all software it wants. But our users are human, not in general smarter than we ourselves. > Notice that the "References" section to GNU Coding Standards > (https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#References), which > was mentioned earlier in this thread, seems to suffer from a very > similar problem when it uses the criterion of a non-free program or > system to be "well known". That is another example of paying attention to the nature of the world we are in. If we knew that our users would defend their freedom firmly once introduced to free software, we could mention nonfree programs without worrying that readers would start to use them. But that is not the case. We need to try to reconcile the goals of (1) telling people how to get the best use of Emacs when they also use some nonfree programs, (2) showing we condemn those nonfree programs for taking away users' freedom, and (3) not encouraging use of them. I think these goals are _mostly_ compatible: we can do all of them pretty well together, even if not perfectly. -- Dr Richard Stallman Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)