Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 17.10.2020 14:40, Marcel Ventosa wrote:

> > So we won't suggest ELPA as an option either? What about the users
> > who don't know the difference? MELPA is also an ELPA, after all (as
> > in "Emacs Lisp Package Archive").
>
> Is it a survey then or is it an opportunity to "educate/advertise?"

Somebody else already explained that a poll where only one of the 
options is written and others are free-form will be biased anyway.

> > > I
> > > would think it should be guided, for the most part, by what the people
> > > putting their time into it want to create, within the principles of the
> > > philosophy of the project and its goals.
>
> > It's not a painting or a novel. It's a software project, with certain
> > expectations of practicality.
>
> Are you claiming Emacs is not practical?

It's less practical than it could be.

And you seem to be claiming it doesn't need to.

> > > 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.
>
> I'm explaining how easy it is to modify Emacs to suit particular needs,
> and listing the possibilities that already exist for doing so.

Why are you explaining that to an Emacs developer?

> > 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.
>
> It is GNU policy not to promote or encourage proprietary software.

Those are not objective words, but a matter of opinion, to say the least.

> To
> the extent that any community does so, GNU must not promote or encourage
> that community.

You are saying that, by mentioning MELPA is the poll, GNU would promote 
MELPA. Right?

Are you promoting proprietary software by saying the phrase "proprietary 
software", over and over, on this mailing list? And even giving examples 
sometimes.

> I fail to see what injustice has been perpetrated on the
> MELPA maintainers here, or how they have been badmouthed.

Saying "MELPA promotes proprietary software" is like saying that GNU 
project promotes, I don't know... late-stage capitalism. Just by the 
virtue of being mostly developed in a capitalist country, and by being 
useful to many organizations participating in capitalist economies with 
high degree of inequality.

Or that it promotes proprietary software by providing support for some 
of it.

Let's disregard its mission, and all virtues and accomplishments, shall we?