Re: [PROPOSAL] Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > > The GNU project has had a long standing objection to package 
  > > repositories which include non-free software.  For this exact reason, 
  > > Debian, which itself is 100% free software, is not considered an FSF 
  > > endorsed operating system.
  > >

  > You are confusing two different things: distros which distribute binaries 
  > to end-users (Debian and others) and source code repositories.

We make a distinction, but it's not exacty that distinction as described
in the lines above.

On one hand, we have distros.  A distro lists programs that in
principle you may wish to install side by side in one computer.  (Yes,
it has more wrinkles than that, but that's the basic point.)  You're
likely to see all of them as choices for what you might install.

On the other hand, we have repo sites where in principle anyone can
put a program.  Those programs are not all meant to be potentially
used together.  They may even be written for different platforms.
Basically, the packages in a repo site are not a menu of packages to
install.  Being interested in one package there does not mean you want
to know about the other packages hosted there.

That fundamental difference in purpose is the reason that we use
different criteria for judging distros and judging repo sites.  Their
respective criteria are based on their purposes.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)