Re: How are the defaults chosen?

[Göktuğ Kayaalp]

On 2020-09-09 18:07 +03, Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> wrote:
> This entire discussion seems to start out from the premise that the
> defaults change willy-nilly, when the reality is that Emacs is famous
> precisely for being very backwards compatible and conservative.  They
> change only when there are strong reasons to do so.

I think this discussion is happening because until recently Emacs was
the kind of software where the users were the developers and the
developers were the users.  Even if a user weren’t actively
participating here, they were aware of it and how things happened.  But
recently we’re experiencing an influx of new users that are coming from
different background and through different pathways who are not really
familiar with how things happen, and clear explanations of how things
happen here could help bridge the gap.

> I think it would be more useful to demonstrate some important breaking
> changes that we should not have done.

Didn’t intend to imply such stuff happened.  Sorry if it was understood
that way.  Just that, as above, there’s a large community of Emacsers
that are not familiar with say pre-2010 FOSS development, with how
things are decided in a mailing list, debbugs, etc.


--
İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp / @cadadr / <https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
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