Re: gds.el --- Emacs interface to Google Desktop Search

[Richard M. Stallman]

    However, I have done and continue to contribute to other open source
    projects, have successfully convinced past employers to release work
    we have developed as open source (sometimes GPL, sometimes BSD/MIT)
    and plan to continue to do so. 

The GNU Project does not advocate, or intentionally practice, "open
source".  We disagree with the ideas that those words stand for.
However, it sounds like these open source packages are also free
software, and developing them is a contribution to our community.
Thank you for participating in them.


However, free software is needed also to work in "specialist
domains"--and if there are enough customers to keep an (unethical)
developer of proprietary software in business, there ought to be
enough to support the development of free software to do the job.
What is needed is for the users--a substantial fraction of them--to
decide to support development of the free replacement.

Otherwise, a certain group of users will be trapped in subjugation
semipermanently, and that is not a good thing.

    Feel free to try
    and convert as many as you can to your ethical standpoint, but refraim
    from trying to dictate how they should live their lives - convert
    rather than conscript. 

If you think that the term "conscript" applies to the statements that
I have made in this list, you have misunderstood something
fundamental.  What I am doing is trying to convince people, just as I
have done for 22 years.