Re: Emacs vista build failures

[David Kastrup]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden> writes:

> Richard M Stallman wrote:
>>     And once again: If this did not work easily on w32 too it might
>> stop     people from using it.
>>
>> We must reject any presumption that free programs should work on
>> Windows.
>
> Yes, but that is a different thing. IF making free programs working on
> windows helps promote GNU/Linux (or Herd) is not that good?

Our first goal is to have a free operating system.  This benefits
everybody since anybody is free to use that as long as his hardware
supports it.  So if people work on Windows software who would otherwise
work on improving a free system, everybody loses, while only the users
of the non-free operating system gain.

If people who work only on proprietary systems otherwise make free
software work on those systems, nobody loses.

In short, we should not lose our focus.  Winning people to free software
through Emacs on Windows can't work if the free systems become worse
because of the redirection of effort.  If we want to win them over to
free systems, we should make the free systems as good as we can, not the
unfree ones.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum