Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Jean Louis]

* Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> [2020-10-16 22:37]:
> > devastating for a repository that is supposed to push free software,
> > in other words, repository is hypocritical.
> 
> No, it's supposed to _publish_ free software.

Alright, I just think of policies.

Imagine if free software repository would publish only software that
wraps around proprietary software, would that be free? So it is matter
of policy.

For same reaso Debian GNU/Linux cannot be said to be free, at many
pages they guide users to include non-free software, unspoken from
Archlinux or other distributions.

So it is just matter of endorsement.

> > Would it be only hypocritical without influencing users, fine, but it
> > does influence thousands of users and is promoting the download number
> > of software that guides users to non-free software, so that is how it
> > becomes not ethical.
> 
> Some time ago I read an essay about infighting in the political left
> community. How a lot of members choose to find and attack progressively
> personal character faults in their fellow activists, instead of working
> together and presenting a united front against the capitalist oppressors.
> 
> You can draw an easy parallel to the software community and the struggle vs
> proprietary software.

That question is best answered here:
https://github.com/melpa/melpa/issues/7185

So that is request to remove those packages and to make a policy not
to include such, that is best way to raise the issue and see if we are
truly together in free software promotion.

> But it doesn't work as well if the survey is biased from the outset.

But survey is "biased" (opinionated) from beginning, it was not published on
emacs-devel initially, it was published on Reddit initially and I am
sure there are reasons for initiator for the survey, those reasons may
be that whay you call biased, I call it opinions, but not necessarily
unjust opinions (biased).

It is better to say opinionated. Again I see nothing wrong against
opinionated surveys as what Emacs teaches its users it to become
opinionated, they constantly try to improve their configurations,
themese, etc.