Re: New maintainer

[David Reitter]

On Oct 5, 2015, at 6:21 PM, John Wiegley <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>>>>>> David Reitter <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> Do you consider downstream projects a legitimate way of providing that
>> experience on the basis of GPL principles without diluting the overall
>> mission of the FSF and the GNU project?
> 
> Can you give an example?  I don't fully understand your question.

I’m sorry, I thought that was obvious.

Since 2005, the Aquamacs project has been publishing its own Emacs distribution 
for the Mac, based on a recent stable or development-stage version of Emacs 22, 
23, 24, and soon 25.    The version we distribute is patched at Lisp and C 
levels, and it comes packaged with a great deal of useful packages, including 
ESS and AUCTeX.  Last time I checked, we had about 12-14,000 regular users (not 
just installs).

It’s a downstream project implementing features that do not conform to all of 
GNU’s and the FSF’s policies, and addressing a non-free (but quite open) 
platform.  I think it still promotes freedom among those who choose this 
platform.

D