bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Jean Louis]

Under the Help menu, the last one, {C-h g} or "About GNU" is made as a
link to https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html just as it is within
the page "About Emacs" in the line: "GNU and Freedom" (hyperlink) - Why we
developed GNU Emacs and the GNU system.

From a view point of user located in Western developed countries, this
may be alright, as many are simply used to Internet availability.

Internet is not available in majority of this world. Students in East
Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, they use computers so often
without any Internet connection. With the Emasc installed, they will
simply miss to understand "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" titles as
Internet is not opening.

As that article is pretty much static, and Emacs being pretty much
software for offline usage, I think that all menu items and such offline
information shall stay offline.

Within the offline page "About GNU" or "GNU and Freedom" one could place
a link for the user to visit the online page if necessary.

Thus keeping online links in the offline menu of Emacs editor is not
appropriate, as it will not give information to those users without Internet.



In GNU Emacs 27.0.50 (build 4, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2019-08-31 built on protected.rcdrun.com
Repository revision: 172b99a43ab60dac29eb09231246793a1ab32343
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11906000
System Description: Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre

Recent messages:
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
mwheel-scroll: End of buffer [3 times]
mwheel-scroll: Beginning of buffer [2 times]
Contacting host: www.gnu.org:443
uncompressing publicsuffix.txt.gz...done
Mark set
delete-backward-char: Text is read-only [2 times]
user-error: Beginning of history; no preceding item

Configured using:
 'configure --prefix=/package/text/emacs-2019-08-31 --with-modules
 --without-gpm --with-x-toolkit=lucid
 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/home/data1/protected/GNUstep/Library/Libraries/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig'

Configured features:
XAW3D XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY
INOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE HARFBUZZ M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS LUCID X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS JSON PDUMPER
LCMS2 GMP

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: de_DE.UTF-8
  value of $LANG: de_DE.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  buffer-read-only: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort hashcash mail-extr emacsbug message dired dired-loaddefs
rfc822 mml mml-sec epa derived epg epg-config mm-decode mm-bodies
mm-encode mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail jka-compr cl-extra
help-mode gnutls network-stream url-http mail-parse rfc2231 url-gw nsm
rmc url-cache url-auth eww easymenu mm-url gnus nnheader gnus-util rmail
rmail-loaddefs rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mail-utils wid-edit mm-util
mail-prsvr thingatpt url-queue url url-proxy url-privacy url-expand
url-methods url-history url-cookie url-domsuf url-util url-parse
auth-source cl-seq eieio eieio-core cl-macs eieio-loaddefs
password-cache json map url-vars mailcap shr text-property-search puny
svg xml seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv dom format-spec
time-date subr-x cl-loaddefs cl-lib browse-url tooltip eldoc electric
uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win
term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe
tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode
prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select
scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core
term/tty-colors frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang
vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932
hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic
chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook
help simple abbrev obarray minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs
button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5
base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable
backquote threads dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting
system-font-setting font-render-setting x-toolkit x multi-tty
make-network-process emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 16 139046 8792)
 (symbols 48 9912 1)
 (strings 32 40188 2623)
 (string-bytes 1 1137589)
 (vectors 16 15715)
 (vector-slots 8 242378 10698)
 (floats 8 55 82)
 (intervals 56 16881 190)
 (buffers 992 14))

-- 
Thanks,
Jean Louis

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Glenn Morris]

We made the opposite decision 5+ years ago, ref eg 00156f9549.

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus About GNU and GNU and Freedom to be made offline

[Jean Louis]

* Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> [2019-09-03 01:43]:
> 
> We made the opposite decision 5+ years ago, ref eg 00156f9549.

Sure somebody made such decision in past. Is that to keep up with the
ever changing online page?

I think that Emacs version is changing more often then the referenced
pages. And I am thinking for dissemination of the message that is
referenced by those URLs, in fact I am worried for that, as I know
from first hand that so many students do not have access to
Internet. At least not always and not from every computer. I also know
they use Emacs from relation with some of those students in East
Africa. Speaking just out of personal experience.

I can see that those files were removed out of the offline
distribution:

* etc/CENSORSHIP, etc/GNU, etc/LINUX-GNU, etc/THE-GNU-PROJECT, etc/WHY-FREE:

This happened, so it seems to me, out of the idea that everybody has
Internet.

It would be more beneficial would it stay in the distribution, and
that menus are offline available.

Or that menus would point to online links only when there is Internet
available, that could be double option.

Files like GNU-PROJECT and those others, they need not be Emacs
specific to be with the Emacs, there is nothing wrong it it. It is
spreading free software idea.

Does the removal of those files point to some statistics that files
were not contributive to free software idea? I remember myself reading
similar files in /etc back in 1999 and "getting the idea", and I did
not find it on Internet neither looked for it on Internet.

Think about what is beneficial to spread the message of free software.

Even if you made decision in past, you can still make new decision in
present.

Jean

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

We used to include copies of such articles in /etc.
I removed them, thinking that it was better to refer to the web.
I wanted to remove something from the Emacs distro that I
thought was superfluous.

Based on what you've just said, maybe we should include
copies of the most important articles in the Emacs distribution,
as before.

Perhaps we should also include
https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
and https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus About GNU and GNU and Freedom to be made offline

[Jean Louis]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> [2019-09-03 07:36]:
> [[[ 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. ]]]
> 
> We used to include copies of such articles in /etc.
> I removed them, thinking that it was better to refer to the web.
> I wanted to remove something from the Emacs distro that I
> thought was superfluous.
> 
> Based on what you've just said, maybe we should include
> copies of the most important articles in the Emacs distribution,
> as before.
> 
> Perhaps we should also include
> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
> and https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.

Please think of the time when Emacs was distributed on CD, or
diskette, people did not have Internet.

It was for many a line to find out about the free software.

All those distributions and dissemination of free software was
targetting mostly developed countries. I remember in Germany
1997-1998, it was hard to obtain the set of GNU CDs, and even then,
just few of them were available in the major library, and quickly
sold.

Today in Western countries, more or less, free software has got it
place and position in space and time, and it is politically recognized
within European Union, well known in North Americas and I would say to
good degree in South Americas.

If I think just of 3 countries in East Africa, Uganda, Kenya and
Tanzania, that is already about 150 million people, about little less
than half of the US population, and free software is almost
unknown. Yes, many people have smart phones there, but Internet is
expensive for many students, and they have no possibility to access
those menus with Internet links.

Emacs is still mainly offline editor, thus offline Help and "About
GNU" shall give the offline resource, not online resource.

And if online resource is important, than one can make 2 menus, one
online, one offline.

The menu item "About GNU" points to https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

I consider "The GNU Project" important for those professors in
universities which could be the driving force to convert all
university into free software and understand how it can impact all the
country.

From Western viewpoint, maybe every school has access to Internet, but
that is not so.

Universities in East Africa often do not have their fixed phone lines,
unspoken from Internet lines, and may be far deep in the jungle where
no fixed Internet line comes in.

Busitema[1] university is just after the Busitema forest[2], resources
are scarce in the area, student live in campus and live on little
money.

If we think of people who do not have Internet, at least not all the
time, we shall provide them with offline articles, such as "About GNU"
in the main Emacs menu, under Help, which is major one to understand
the roots of free software.

We should look from viewpoint of those new areas in the world where
nobody knows about free software, where proprietary is not dominant,
we could rather say "almost absolute".

Jean

Footnotes:
[1]  http://www.busitema.ac.ug

[2]  https://ugandatourismcenter.com/place/busitema-forest/

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Stefan Kangas]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:

> We used to include copies of such articles in /etc.
> I removed them, thinking that it was better to refer to the web.
> I wanted to remove something from the Emacs distro that I
> thought was superfluous.
>
> Based on what you've just said, maybe we should include
> copies of the most important articles in the Emacs distribution,
> as before.
>
> Perhaps we should also include
> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
> and https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.

I think that makes sense.  Are there any objections to removing the wontfix tag?

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Glenn Morris]

Stefan Kangas wrote:

>> Perhaps we should also include
>> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
>> and https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
>
> I think that makes sense. Are there any objections to removing the
> wontfix tag?

Yes, why should Emacs have to distribute these files (after no
objections to a 5-year removal process), as opposed to any other GNU project?

Why not make a separate project collecting said docs and encourage
GNU/Linux distributions to make it a binary dependency (or suggested
package) for all GNU packages?

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus About GNU and GNU and Freedom to be made offline

[Jean Louis]

* Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> [2019-09-17 03:18]:
> Stefan Kangas wrote:
> 
> >> Perhaps we should also include
> >> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
> >> and https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
> >
> > I think that makes sense. Are there any objections to removing the
> > wontfix tag?
> 
> Yes, why should Emacs have to distribute these files (after no
> objections to a 5-year removal process), as opposed to any other GNU project?
> 
> Why not make a separate project collecting said docs and encourage
> GNU/Linux distributions to make it a binary dependency (or suggested
> package) for all GNU packages?

Emacs is probably main GNU package, it is popular and helps in
disseminating the information about GNU project since its beginning. I
am sure that is why those files like "About GNU" are included in the
Emacs, as it is main prominent and very necessary GNU package, there
were not so many software programs in the beginning, software like
Emacs was used to disseminate GNU information, and I hope it remains
so forever.

This bug was to change menu from the online URL to the static text to
be displayed within Emacs, that contains the online URL, for reasons
that majority of this world still does not have proper Internet
connection and thus menu item remains not accessible. It relates to
last menu item in Help menu "About GNU" (the URL) so that the text
"About GNU" can be shown within Emacs and without online connection.

It is little different subject which files shall be distributed with
the Emacs distribution. Those files make it quite informative and have
brought number of users to GNU project, there are jokes and other
informational files in Emacs distribution. 

Jean

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > Yes, why should Emacs have to distribute these files (after no
  > objections to a 5-year removal process), as opposed to any other GNU project?

It is not a matter of "have to".  It is useful and costs very little.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> Yes, why should Emacs have to distribute these files (after no
> objections to a 5-year removal process), as opposed to any other GNU project?

I don't think there's much point in including these files in the Emacs
distribution -- they're general, and having them in a central place is
makes more sense.

So I'm closing this bug report.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Jean Louis]

* Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> [2022-02-10 10:41]:
> Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Yes, why should Emacs have to distribute these files (after no
> > objections to a 5-year removal process), as opposed to any other GNU project?
> 
> I don't think there's much point in including these files in the Emacs
> distribution -- they're general, and having them in a central place is
> makes more sense.

You are developer of Emacs in developed country. From your viewpoint
it is easy to forget that majority of this world does not have
Internet access and they are unable to access "central place" which
implies it is place on Internet.

I am in under-developed countries on projects. Reason for the request
is that distribution of Emacs and GNU is going on in these countries
by means of DVD ROMs, and not by means of Internet. Same is for
movies, they are purchased as DVD ROMs, rather than downloaded as
about 99.9% of people do not have a fixed Internet access, they use it
over their mobile connection provided they do have a smart phone and
know how to connect to computer. 

Majority of those people earn less than 80 dollars per month and don't
pay for Internet access. Those students here use GNU/Linux but not
necessarily have Internet, they make their reports, works, etc. If I
just speak of one country here, that is about 45 millions of people,
if I speak of 3 countries in East Africa there are 150 millions of
people, and there is 54 countries on the African continent. Then there
are countries such as those in Central and South America, and Asian
countries. We use here Internet cafes, something that you may not be
able to find in your country easily as of today. They disappeared from
developed countries.

Majority of the world is much less developed and have difficulties to
access Internet including to download easy any software they
want. This statement may be much contrary to what you perceive of the
world. Travel around and get acquainted.

But computer users do pay for their software on DVD ROMs and that is
how GNU/Linux is installed.

If you only assume you are developing Emacs for developed countries,
you have got a valid point. I would deem such development rather
discriminatory and not helpful from teaching viewpoint.

If you put those files inside of Emacs, waste number of people will
get access to learn about GNU and free software.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

bug#37267: 27.0.50; Menus "About GNU" and "GNU and Freedom" to be made offline

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

I originally put those articles into GNU Emacs because GNU Emacs
was the only thing that the GNU Project distributed.  Over the years,
more general articles about GNU were added.

Then, in the 2000s, we figured that we may as well refer to these
articles on www.gnu.org.

In principle, we can use either method or both at once.
It's not an ethical question, just a practical one.

But now that we see there are potentially many people
who would benefit from included copies -- and that this would
substantially spread awareness of GNU -- I think we should
include them.  It takes very little maintenance work.

-- 
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)