Re: Release plans

[Johannes Weiner]

Hi Richard,

"Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> writes:

>     It's enough if there is one person providing a patch to run non-free
>     extensions.
>
> Such all-or-nothing thinking isn't valid.  It is clear that if some
> sort of add-on depends on people to patch Emacs, that obstacle will
> discourage its adoption.  This will in turn discourage the development
> of such add-ons.  That doesn't absolutely assure no one will develop
> them, but does help.

Sure.  Then make that something more convenient.  Consider a
distribution of GNU Emacs that is prepatched with a module loader and
comes with an installation script that fetches the non-free library from
an URL.  Or something similar if this has legal issues.

Or don't distribute a fork but go for the library and executable wrapper
approach you can stack on top of a vanilla GNU Emacs, utilizing the
process interface.

My point is that even today you can implement something that extends
Emacs in non-free ways with rather low efforts and provide a product
that is easy to use.

I highly doubt that people who have the idea of distributing non-free
extensions to Emacs would wait until it grows a module loader.  It's not
needed.

But a module loader probably encourages hackers and not so much immoral
individuals/companies whos primary goal is to sell their software rather
than hacking the good hack.

Like I said, as a person keen on technical stuff I refuse to work around
limited interfaces but would prefer improving them.

If my goal is not a cool mechanism but getting my nonfree software
distributed, I don't need the module loader and can already do that.

        Hannes