Re: Meanness

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> Let's assume that I have a spouse or an elderly parent who are asking
> my help with their PC running a non-free OS: by the above reasoning, I
> should divorce my spouse or renounce my parents, rather than helping
> them, if for some reason they absolutely won't have me install a free
> OS.

Both my elderly parents are running GNU/Linux systems, and my father is
actually using Emacs.  Anyway, I don't need to divorce a spouse or
renounce a parent if they choose to use a system for which I am not
willing or able to do support.  It just means that they are on their own
with it, nothing more, nothing less.

And frankly, my abilities for support on a machine where I can't use ssh
for remote access would be quite limited, anyway.

> We have a common goal here: improving Emacs.

Emacs is not improved for me by Windows-only features.  And I am not
going to blow out US$200 and/or agree to a contract yielding Microsoft
total control over my computer just to use Emacs.  So if your goal is to
improve Emacs on Windows, I don't see that this is a goal you would have
in common with me.

> Let's not put that goal in jeopardy by emphasizing minor (yes, minor!)
> differences between us on how soon and how completely should each
> private citizen switch to using Free Software and Free Software alone.

That never was the issue.  The issue is more like what we have to gain
by having more and more software developers distracted by spending much
of their time working on supporting non-free platforms or dealing with
the consequences of such support.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum