Re: Elisp LSP Server

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Instead of making it easier for people to put their customizations on
  > > GitHub, how about making it harder?  It would encourage people to move
  > > to systems that do not require running proprietary software.

  > Do you seriously believe that? We should deliberately hinder our own
  > progress, hoping it somehow would hurt GitHub?

The issue here is what constitutes "progress".  What does progress
mean, in any given situation?  Would a language server for Emacs Lisp
be progress?  It would be a mistake to assume so.

Our work proceeds by replacing nonfree programs.  Why do that?
Because each one is an injustice -- denies freedom to its users by
giving its developer power over them.  A nonfree program is not an
inferior solution; it is a problem.  We can fix that problem by
replacing it with free software, so that it can't do wrong to people
any more.

When we can't supersede a particular nonfree program in the near
future, we should be careful not to be led into enhancing its use.
Thus, when someone says, "Let's implement XYZ; it will be convenient
for users that want to do ABC," we must ask: What is ABC, and is
making ABC more convenient a good thing?

Popular nonfree programs have many users, and they will innocently
suggest we direct our work to make their use of nonfree software more
convenient.  I don't blame them for suggesting this, but it is not
what we should do.

We have to do careful thinking about what constitutes progress in this
particular situation.  We have to find the various options --
including mixtures of the obvious options -- and think about what good
and bad effects they would have.  Finding the right choice may be
subtle and complex.

But we can't find the right choice if we don't evaluate it based on
the right values and goals.  Facilitating the use of VS Code or GitHub
is not a goal; encouraging people to stop using them is a goal.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)