Re: Release plans

[Thomas Lord]

Richard M. Stallman wrote:
> The decision on whether to include a dynamic linker in Emacs
> does not directly affect users' freedom.  (It doesn't change the license.)
> What is affects is which changes we facilitate and which changes we don't.
>
> The case of XRefactory and its harmful effects on CEDET illustrate the
> kind of harm I'm trying to avoid.  It also shows that we cannot
> totally avoid such problems.  But opening a convenient door for making
> them is likely to mean more of them.  I want to have less of them.
>   


You picked a great example.

The absence of a dynamic loader makes it harder
to implement the more performance-intensive
parts of a modern IDE.

Therefore, the dynamic loader ban makes a free
software project like CEDET harder than it
needs to be.

That a modern IDE project for Emacs is so hard makes
the problem an attractive target for a proprietary software
company.   To the proprietary vendor, the difficulty of
writing the program in the first place is a barrier to entry
and will help protect future profits

In other words: the incentive to create the non-free
XRefractory comes, in part, from the ban on a dynamic
loader.

The ban has the exact opposite of the intended effect.

-t




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