Re: Emacs Mac port

[Richard Stallman]

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[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > We should aim to provide the best possible Emacs experience on every
  > platform,

Usually, but not always.  The purpose of GNU Emacs is to be a good
part of the GNU system and thus to make the GNU system better; other
platforms are secondary.  GNU Emacs should never offer people a
practical reason to use some other system instead of GNU.

Therefore, when someone implements a useful new feature but only for a
non-GNU system, we do not accept it that form.  Instead we say, "Make
it work equally well on GNU, and we will accept it."

  > many friends
  > of mine who were long-time GNU/Linux users work on OS X today, me
  > included

This is a VERY bad thing.  Can we find ways to discourage this?

In principle, adding nice features to Emacs that work on GNU/Linux and
do not work on MacOS could help.  But I don't see much scope for
success that way.  I think our principal hope of influencing people is
through influencing the way they think about the choice of system.
For instance, by teaching them to value freedom (which MacOS denies)
more and convenience (which Apple might offer them) less.

If we took the attitude that we aim to "serve the users" wherever they
happen to be, that would convey the message, "Sure, switch to MacOS --
we will make it easier for you."  For us, a self-defeating approach.

Thus our stance is that a person who moves from GNU/Linux to MacOS is
being self-destructively foolish.  We take this seriously and we must
speak and act in accord with it.  This way, we can influence some
people.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.