Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Jean Louis]

* Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> [2020-10-16 22:08]:
> My argument is that they have done a lot for the community. Some of
> those effects reach the core too.

That is right, and that still does not mean it is good to endorse
MELPA as free software repository as it is for reasons of those
packages in question, dangerous for users, as proprietary software in
itself is dangerous.

It may sound not logical, but contributions are welcome from anybody,
and denunciation is good tool to point out to users that GNU and also
FSF is not endorsing the non-free software distributions, and also
non-free software repositories.

> Some Emacs maintainers themselves are known to use proprietary
> software. And use Emacs on proprietary OSes. And yet, somehow, MELPA
> is the odd one out?

Everybody is welcome to contribute to GNU.

GNU policies do not mind if developers use proprietary software or
operating systems, that is how free software entered proprietary
operating systems.

It does not matter if Emacs maintainers are themselves using
proprietary software as they do not necessarily push or set the
policies for the overall GNU project.

In any case, everybody is welcome to contribute in creation and
maintenance of free software operating systems and its parts.

Denunciation would not discriminate between Emacs developers or non
Emacs developers, but it would speaking out against publicly
distribution of software that purports to be free, but its sole
purpose was to run proprietary software or to interact with non-free
software or interacting with proprietary Services as Software
Substitutes: 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html

Add your useful voice to Github issue on MELPA, to remove such
software packages that wrap proprietary: 
https://github.com/melpa/melpa/issues/7185

> > Why should Emacs development be guided by (external) survey results?
> 
> Why should it use the scientific method?

I think it is far from being scientific. Those few people proposed it
who do not have any experience in making a survey. If one has
experience, one is not making any questions, one just do it. Finally,
it was not a professional opinion poll agency.

> > Also, anyone can suggest changes and convince the maintainers that
> > these changes are in the best interest of the project (and
> > contribute the actual changes if they are accepted).
> 
> No, not "anyone can convince".

Just {M-x report-emacs-bug} and they will not ask you for name, birth
day, developers will look into the bug report, or suggestion
improvement, it is a group decision.

If you have something to propose, you are free, and anybody is free,
it is so far I know, not even a subscription mailing list, people can
write to mailing list without being subscribed, great thing.

There are other mailing lists like help-gnu-emacs, also very friendly.

I am only sorry for #emacs IRC channel being unfriendly especially
towards free software movement at times, but that is due to few who do
their personal hate promotion, or have nothing better to do in life,
or simply work for proprietary software and hate themselves.

> > If they are not, Emacs makes it quite simple to implement changes for
> > personal "improvements". I have written functions that serve me
> > personally and change the behavior of Emacs to suit my needs. There are
> > limits to what I can do, which could be pushed if I dedicated a greater
> > effort to do so. How is that unfair?
> 
> You're veering the discussion off to the side for some reason.
> 
> But if we're talking of "unfair", releasing Emacs under GPL, enabling such
> excellent extensibility that multiple communities spring up over years, ones
> brimming with creativity and people dedicating years of their spare time to
> the extensions, and then badmouthing them from afar as though they violated
> some existing contract (social or legal), *that* is unfair.

Everybody is free to make proprietary software by using Emacs Lisp and
run it with Emacs Lisp. So people are also free to sell such
proprietary software. GNU is not supporting those communities.

Similarly, packages can be made solely for purpose of running
proprietary software or interacting with such, or interacting with
Service as a Software Substitute, or fetching some proprietary
information. When such software is promoted on supposedly free
software repository, and free software repository has no clear policy
on protecting users' freedom, then it is appropriate to speak out
against it.

There is maybe no written contract, yet there is unspoken
understanding that if person is releasing free software such as Emacs
package that such should not use proprietary software, as that defeats
the purpose.

- Hey brother... I made here one spectacular Emacs package.

- wow, great, I hope you have free software license, that I can use it
  too.

- sure it has free software license, fine GPL terms here inside

- alright, give me that I try

- sure, here it is, to run this software you only need to download
  the proprietary LastPass, then it will work

- oh, is that so? And what does LastPass do to my computer? Do they
  track me? Read my information? Read my passwords?