From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: joakim@verona.se Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Release plans Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:25:40 +0200 Message-ID: References: <48A5BAD7.8030302@emf.net> <48A740CB.4050404@emf.net> <20080816213508.GA8530@muc.de> <87hc9ka8eg.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20080817073124.GA1294@muc.de> <87ljyv5gy5.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20080818101802.GA2615@muc.de> <87bpzqqk7b.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20080818210927.GD2615@muc.de> <87wsidnxqp.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87ljytkwpk.fsf@rattlesnake.com> <878wusz0v9.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87vdxp27z6.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87prnxe5hc.fsf@rattlesnake.com> <873aktck5d.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87k5e5dsvq.fsf@rattlesnake.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1219785977 15903 80.91.229.12 (26 Aug 2008 21:26:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:26:17 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "Robert J. Chassell" , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 26 23:27:10 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KY646-00080g-6g for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:27:02 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54294 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KY638-0008Ke-0V for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:26:02 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KY632-0008J4-Ez for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:25:56 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KY630-0008HK-OD for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:25:55 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=33569 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KY630-0008HD-MJ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:25:54 -0400 Original-Received: from iwfs.imcode.com ([82.115.149.64]:49001 helo=gate.verona.se) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KY62v-0002GX-D8; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:25:50 -0400 Original-Received: from chopper (IDENT:1005@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by gate.verona.se (8.13.4/8.11.4) with ESMTP id m7QLPcpq014428; Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:25:38 +0200 In-Reply-To: (Richard M. Stallman's message of "Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:37:12 -0400") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.60 (gnu/linux) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.4-2.6 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:102998 Archived-At: "Richard M. Stallman" writes: > The decision on whether to include a dynamic linker in Emacs > does not directly affect users' freedom. (It doesn't change the license.) > What is affects is which changes we facilitate and which changes we don't. > > The case of XRefactory and its harmful effects on CEDET illustrate the > kind of harm I'm trying to avoid. It also shows that we cannot > totally avoid such problems. But opening a convenient door for making > them is likely to mean more of them. I want to have less of them. I would like to add two things I find missing from this discussion. - Things can change over time - People can change over time with helpful education I had trouble understanding the dynamic linker ban ten years ago, but I now understand the relevance of it at the time. I've learned something from this. Today I would claim that limiting Emacs technical abilities hurts Emacs ability to be used as an educational tool for the value of software freedom. I claim this because I belive people need somewhere acessible to start learning. When I started using Emacs it was because of its technical merits. It was available on all the proprietary platforms I used. Only later did I discover the value of freedom, and Emacs helped me with this. Emacs still has great technical merit of course, but its not imediately obvious to newcommers. In order to make it more obvious, heres a short list of things I think would help: - Merge CEDET, and improve it so great IDE functionality can be had fairly easily - Merge ECB so IDE like code browsing tools becomes available - Make it possible to write more beautiful elisp. I'm not a lisp expert but even I find it painful that writing recursive functions is made hard due to the lack of tail-optimization. It should be fun to code elisp. - provide different levels of chrome out of the box. One skin would be bling-bling with all facilities enabled, transparent windows etc, and another one would be monk mode with nearly nothing. -- Joakim Verona