Re: Further CC-mode changes

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:

 > I think it depends.  "Gratuitous incompatibility" is one thing, but
 > "refrain from relying on fixes, useful APIs etc that exist for years
 > already" is another.

*You* do understand the irony of that claim, don't you?

But no, what it depends on is whether you use those versions or not.
Two separate surveys of large (>100) corporate Emacsen populations
taken in 2003 and 2007 showed that around 10% of users were using
10-year-old or older Emacsen.  Even Microsoft has been taught that
lesson.  The trend in forward-looking projects is to "long term
support" of various kinds, invariably involving multiple versions and
even competing implementations, and even longer-term support is one of
the things that keeps free software businesses profitable.

I think it's ironic that when it comes to the XEmacs support Alan
wants to provide, Glenn is all for "aggressive modernization" and
devil take the hindmost, but when it comes to the same policy toward
the git repo Eric wants to provide, he's the loudest of footdraggers.
I think that is pretty paradigmatic of Emacs, and one of the reasons
why Emacs is itself considered "unprogressive" by most programmers.