Re: How to make Emacs popular again.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: philipk@posteo.net, eduardoochs@gmail.com, spacibba@aol.com,
>       emacs-devel@gnu.org, dgutov@yandex.ru, jamtlu@gmail.com
> Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:13:20 -0400
> 
>   >    https://hewgill.com/dict/
> 
> Unfortunately, it is a "site", meaning a server you have to contact
> over the internet.
> 
> The tendency to involve other people's computers in doing jobs that
> you could do on your own computer is a fundamental wrong turning in
> computing practice.  'dict' is an example of this problem.
> 
> We need to lead people away from that paradigm, not adapt our
> activities to fit into it.

I understand the general issue with using services, but in this case
the server just sends the description of a word taken from a
dictionary.  Aren't we a tad too radical, perhaps even extreme, in
this case?  It's not like the server calculates something that could
be subverted by a server we don't control.  What harm could be done by
looking up a word?  And how is it different from the command we have
that queries an Internet search engine (M-s M-w)?  Or from asking an
SMTP server to send an email message?