Re: Fwd: Re: ns-do-applescript

[Jon Snader]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> We don't want to make things convenient for Mac users, when 
> those things
> are not possible on a free system.  Just as Emacs doesn't 
> provide
> "OS-specific interface routines" to perform tasks on non-free 
> operating
> systems that are not possible on free ones.

Do you hear yourself? I don't want to be impolite and I do, 
believe me, appreciate the hard work that you and the other Emacs 
maintainers selflessly provide to the community but this is beyond 
silly.

In the first place, Emacs predates Linux by almost two decades and 
during that time it ran exclusively on what we now call non-free 
systems so there's no sacred free system purity baked into its 
DNA. Emacs being free software has traditionally meant that Emacs 
/itself/ is free and not that running it on a proprietary system 
made you a second class citizen.

No one is asking you or anyone else to do any extra work. All we 
ask is you leave what is already in place alone. If you aren't a 
Mac user, it doesn't hurt you in any way but if you insist on 
removing it you will (1) make extra work for the maintainers, (2) 
likely break existing software, and (3) annoy Mac users.

You can say we deserve it for being insufficiently pure but do you 
really want to alienate your second largest user base? That 
attitude will not, I promise you, result in anyone abandoning 
macOS for Linux but it could very well result in disgusted users 
abandoning Emacs for something like VS Code. I'd hate that and I'm 
sure you would too.

I'll accept whatever the community decides but I'm having a hard 
time understanding how this is even controversial.