Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[Lennart Borgman]

David Kastrup wrote:

> The ability to craft a pretty MacOSX-only thing from Emacs is part of
> the value of free software.  Doing so exercises the freedom, but it
> does nothing to sustain it.
>  
In a sense you are right, but I wonder if this is really true. I think 
it is important to be very careful here. Can you for sure say that the 
last sentence is true?

From my perspective I doubt it. I have to use proprietary software 
(read Windows) in my job. It is quite hard for me to be able to use 
Emacs for example since it has been so very difficult to install and 
setup on Windows. I have tried to change this by making it easier to 
install and setup Emacs on Windows, not only for me but for others too. 
This is Windows only since that is the only reasonable way to do it on 
Windows.

I believe this sustains the freedom of free software. It is 
questionable, but I would hardly be doing what I have done if I did not 
think so. My reasoning is that this makes it possible for more people to 
learn to use Emacs and this is of great value when working on different 
platforms. In other words: This makes it easer to switch from MS Windows 
to GNU/Linux or the reverse. However here is an important point: Think 
of this as a kind of osmosis. There are far more people today that can 
switch from MS Windows to GNU/Linux than the reverse. Lessening the 
barrier will then (maybe) help to switch to GNU/Linux.

There is also another reason to do work for proprietary platforms like 
Windows. The main part of the work is done on GNU/Linux - at least that 
is what I believe. This means that we do not sometimes have enough 
knowledge or people to get things working on Windows. For example 
currently emacsserver/client does not work on Windows for CVS Emacs. 
This has been known for several months to be a problem (but there is a 
workaround using gnuserv/client), but nobody has had enough time to 
solve it yet.

There are more examples, but that is unimportant here. I just wanted to 
say that it can be very important to do work on the proprietary 
platforms too.

There are a lot of hurt feelings in this thread and most sane people 
probably stay out. I am however the optimistic type (a type that often 
gets hurt ;-). Can we please try to find the important positive points 
from all people here? BTW is there maybe a useful page on EmacsWiki for 
summarizing things?