[AUCTeX-devel] Re: [comp.emacs.xemacs] AUCTeX 11.84 released

[David Kastrup]

Cc to auctex-devel.

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

> Olivier Galibert writes:
>
>  > As for the AUCTeX problem, legalities aside, it looks like we're
>  > distributing it against the wishes of (one of|the) main maintainer.
>  > Shouldn't we just stop?
>
> Hey, that applies to distributing XEmacs itself.  Shouldn't we just
> stop?  I don't think so.
>
> AUCTeX is free software.  Uwe Brauer, who maintains the XEmacs package
> of AUCTeX, values an XEmacs package enough to do the work and put up
> with both me and David Kastrup (who has publically insulted Uwe on a
> number of occasions).

You better back this up with an actual message id.  I am used to
getting insulted all over the place whenever I post something on the
XEmacs mailing list (notice the title of this thread), but I have
never to my knowledge insulted Uwe.  Do you really need to stoop to
slander?  What I did is repeat things which are both obvious, as well
as have been stated numerous times by himself: that he does not have
the time necessary to maintain the AUCTeX package on XEmacs, and that
maintenance of such a package is way beyond his comfortable skill set.

And that is not an insult, but rather praise: he took up the ball as
well as he could because XEmacs developers intimate with the package
system dropped the ball several years ago.

> I personally use the XEmacs package of AUCTeX because it's all I
> need to use.  That proves that some XEmacs users and contributors
> get positive value from the package version.
>
> As we've seen with ESS, users notice when a package disappears.
> Some are just as happy to go upstream, but others experience a
> noticeable inconvenience.  I suspect that we'd see a lot more of the
> latter with AUCTeX than we did with ESS, though I can't prove it.
>
> If Uwe decides to quit, then I think it's reasonable to consider
> dropping AUCTeX from the XEmacs packages distribution (but not yet a
> no-brainer).  Or if *you* have a different opinion about what is good
> for XEmacs users, we should discuss that.
>
> But "David Kastrup doesn't like it" is a non-starter for me.  David
> has made it plain that XEmacs goals are none of his business, and
> that he believe his only duty to XEmacs is to tell us what our users
> need.  I see no reason to do anything other than reciprocate in not
> caring about David's goals for AUCTeX.

I think we should just declare XEmacs a non-goal for AUCTeX and either
removing all XEmacs support or declare it open for bit rot.  It is
worse than just a thankless job tieing up a considerable amount of
resources.  It is not just that we don't get any thanks for the work
we invest, but also all kinds of abuse.

It has been an upstream battle all the while not to let XEmacs users
bear the consequences of their community leaders' indifference,
hostility, and political decisions aimed at locking out outsiders'
contributions.

I'm sick of it.  It happens that I am setting the policies for the
AUCTeX project, and I certainly have for all those last years given
out the policy that we'll support XEmacs and its users as well as we
can, even taking up all the slack that XEmacs developers would yard
out, even against passive and active resistance and hostility.

If the XEmacs leaders don't want AUCTeX to be supported for XEmacs,
there is little point in resisting them any longer.

I'm tired of supporting XEmacs users against the wishes of their
community leaders.  And I am tired of asking the AUCTeX developers to
waste further man-months on this black hole, and I am tired of wasting
my own time on reverse-engineering the whole package mess and
providing something that works perfectly with it.

Let just everybody in our team for which it is not a work of love drop
XEmacs support and see where this leads.  It will certainly make
things easier and let us move forward, in particular once we will also
be able to drop Emacs 21.4 as a supported target (once Emacs 22 has
been released and percolated into the major distributions).

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum