Re: Please don't refer to Emacs as "open source"

[Richard Stallman]

    This is empty arguing at its finest, so can we please
    recognize that everybody is agreeing with each other, answer the bloody
    survey, let the poor man do his job, and move on?

Are we all agreeing with each other?  Do we have an obligation to
answer an "open source" survey just because a stranger asks us to?  I
don't think so.  I wouldn't spend a minute working on an activity that
carries the banner of "open source", because I can do other things in
that minute that will help the free software movement more.

On the other hand, to convince the people doing that activity to also
mention "free software" is an achievement for the movement.  That's
worth my time.  I might well agree to answer the survey in exchange
for that success.

    Have you actually read the survey? It's all about how, not why. Any
    reason anyone might have for contributing to emacs is entirely
    irrelevant.

The liberationist motives of GNU may be irrelevant to those questions,
but these motives are the basis for our work, and those questions are
not.

When I saw his message, I thought about what I could do to serve the
goal of users' freedom in relation to it.  I took action, and it looks
like I have partly succeeded.  Just answering his questions would have
been easy, but it wouldn't do the job.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
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