Re: Release plans

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Richard!

On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 09:33:20PM -0400, Richard M. Stallman wrote:
>     Borrowing notions from chess, you're talking about winning by
>     direct attack, possibly with brilliant sacrifices along the way,
>     while I see things more as a positional game, accumulating small
>     advantages, manoevring against enemy weaknesses.  You're Mikhail
>     Tal, I'm José Capablanca.  ;-)

> Your statement assumes both approaches can/do lead to victory.  That is
> precisely what I am not sure of.

Real chess players need to be able to play either strategy.  I don't see
why free software should restrict itself to one strategy.

> One person posted here saying that running Emacs on Windows led him to
> drop Windows for GNU/Linux.  In that case, the Windows support in Emacs
> did lead to victory.  Perhaps it has done so in other cases too.  If
> so, maybe it is effective.

> But just using Emacs and other free programs on Windows is not victory.

There will be no ultimate victory, as such, IMAO.  There will always be
users of restricted software, so long as such is available.  I think the
aim should be that the only people to use proprietary software should be
those who want to; free software should become the default.  As I've said
before, one of the barriers is this:

    <http://www.xkcd.com/456/>

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).