On Contributing To Emacs

[xenodasein]

On Contributing To Emacs

Do not believe the Internet rumors and presume Emacs is hard to change
or improve.

Dealing with a rain of e-mails is not simple, and it is far too easy
to forget that project maintainers are also mere mortals, who are
susceptible to same hardships.

And before saying things like "Why won't they just use that one
website owned by Microshaft?"; please ask yourself whether you actually
have sufficient sociopolitical and historical knowledge on human
condition to make judgments.  In other words, make sure you actually
understand people like RMS, before hotfooting to dismiss them.

In reality you will find them very accommodating, even when you haven't
RTFM'd and did the research.  Especially if you present a sound case.

To the extent that the intended change isn't arguably a good one.

Example:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-08/msg00154.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-08/msg00433.html

It is one thing wanting to work on "your own" thing.  But making changes
to Emacs just to make that thing more marketable?  Why do I assume so?
This author clearly had the time and ability to make amazing
improvements to Emacs built-in package management process, judging from
their own package.  My intention is not to be confrontational, but it is
sad to think about what could have been achieved...

I find this highly discourteous, but this is only my opinion, and
overall good done is likely still significant.

One could easily be misled from Emacs' splendor, but it actually
doesn't have a huge amount of man-hours at its disposal.  Seemingly
small contributions go a very long way.