Re: clang/emacs/ecb/semantic

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:14:19 -0800
> From: Daniel Colascione <address@hidden>
> CC: Chong Yidong <address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden, 
>  address@hidden
> 
> There was no GPLed text editor supporting bidirectional editing
> because the work hadn't been done.

That's not what really happened.  There were at least 2 previous
attempts, 10 years ago, to provide such an Emacs.  They were rejected
(for technical reasons, not ideological ones, but that's not important
for the point I'm making).  Someone could claim that by rejecting
working solutions, Emacs delayed its bidi support by 10 years, and
drove potential users to other, perhaps non-free, editors.

The point is that the mere fact that a certain important requirements
is not fulfilled might well have very good reasons.  It is not enough
to say "this niche is still empty" to prove that the decision to
reject an existing solution was wrong.

> Reducing functionality can *never* serve the cause of software
> freedom. Free programs should be as technically strong as possible,
> even if that means they can talk to non-free programs. It's up to
> developers to produce free software so good that users choose to use
> free programs together, and crippling free software so that it can't
> interoperate with *anything*, be it free or non-free, is a "see no
> evil" approach that's not only a strategic blunder, but an affront to
> users.

That's the same exaggerations and non-practical absolute terms again,
sorry.  I'm not convinced.