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Re: [Reuben Thomas] browse-url.el Opera support


From: Dave Love
Subject: Re: [Reuben Thomas] browse-url.el Opera support
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 15:44:47 +0000
User-agent: Gnus/5.1005 (Gnus v5.10.5) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux)

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Let me add another more down-to-earth argument: if free software
> support non-free tools, like Opera in browse-url.el in this example,
> it becomes the free software people's work to make it work.

I'm afraid some of this sounds patronizing to me.  (I'm sure it's not
meant to be.)

You should be able to find four or five Lisp files devoted to support
of non-free stuff straight off.

> The emacs
> maintainers have to apply the patches, document it, change the code
> whenever the tool changes its API, etc.  This takes time, aka money.
> It is not clear why Emacs maintainers should donate time to people
> that don't give anything back.

I've donated interfaces to non-free stuff because I needed them
(e.g. for debugging tasks gdb couldn't do).  There's no obligation on
users to give anything back -- it's free.

Anyhow, the point is that there should be a different interface so
it's _no_ maintenance work to support different browsers.  If that
makes it easy to use proprietary ones, so be it, as long as it's easy
for the free ones I want to use.




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