Re: EmacsW32 invocation options

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: no-spam@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)
> Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 11:43:25 +0200
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> "Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > As I explained once before, your "distro" is potentially destructive
> > too. It's not hard to imagine how it could lead to a fork of Emacs on
> > Windows (not that it's *going* to happen, but it paves the way for it
> > to happen).
> 
> That's the "risk" of free software ... somebody taking what you've written,
> modify it (as the license permits), and release it as a modified version,
> offering you (and everybody else) the patches to make your version "comply".
> 
> If you don't like those patches, well, that's your freedom.
> 
> I don't see how someone using the freedom of GPL should be accused of
> being destructive, just because he does something you don't approve of.

Kim, I hope you've read this thread before responding, because you've
taken one phrase out of context and jumped the gun on it.

The issue is not freedom, and Juanma hardly needs a lecture about it.
(He might be better off choosing a less radical word than
``destructive'', but then he's not a native English speaker, so we all
might cut him some slack.)  The issue is how to use this freedom in
the best interests of the community at large.

In this case, Lennart's attitude to put into his distribution every
patch he finds useful, but cannot convince the Emacs developers to
accept, is IMO not the best use of that freedom.  It is confusing to
users who expect Emacs to behave as documented and to do that
consistently on all platforms.  And it's an attitude that smells of
schism and forking, which many of us will not approve, because it
diminishes the already small group of active developers by spreading
their insufficient resources between several competing projects.

> I can fully understand why Lennart would prefer his changes to be adopted
> into the core (it's no fun to maintain your "own distro"), but if you don't
> want to do that (I haven't considered the actual changes), then IMO it is
> fine -- and fully legal -- for him to make his own distro.

Of course, it's legal!  No one suggested that Lennart should be
arrested for illegal trafficking in Emacs Lisp or something.

> BTW, IMO, Lennart is doing a fine job of helping getting the 22.1
> release out by providing (unpatched) W32 binaries for all the pretests.

Sure, he does, and he deserves a lot of credit and thanks for that.
As does Juanma, btw, who made emacslient work on Windows to begin
with.