Re: Concrete suggestions to improve Org mode third-party integration :: an afterthought following Karl Voit's Orgdown proposal

[Russell Adams]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2021 at 07:25:02PM +0100, M. ‘quintus’ Gülker wrote:
>
> We started with an interoperability topic and now we are discussing
> whether the intent is to take away software freedom from Emacs org
> users. I cannot help but to find this connection far-fetched. Nobody
> is suggesting to hamper org-mode-in-emacs' further development. All
> that was asked was if there is interest in someone outside of
> org-mode-in-emacs writing up “compatibility levels” for the org
> markup.

These kind of issues snowball because we are also indirectly asking
for our coders and maintainers to consider those external tools while
continuing to support Org. How many syntax documents are we supposed
to maintain outside of the working implementation in Emacs and the
manual?

The topic of software freedom comes up because by definition, other
tools are outside of Emacs and may be non-free. It's important to
consider, but isn't a reason to not discuss features. The key is our
volunteers should not be required to code features for non-free tools
outside of Emacs.

An implied support requirement to preserve interoperability with
external tools is a large commitment, and could also run into the
non-free software issue. Expect people to have strong opinions about
these matters.

> ... not be banned from discussion on this mailing list.

I don't think banning topics is appropriate. I think we were reminded
that this is an Emacs list and FSF software ethics apply. Any official
stance Org maintainers take would have to be in line with that moral
code.

Discussions are often fruitful for all involved and shouldn't be a
problem when conducted in a respectful manner. Expect critical
opinions at times, but we should keep it civil.


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Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com

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