Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[david . reitter]

David Kastrup wrote:

> > Practically, something like the Aquamacs distribubtion and the vast
> > majority of software in general has started out of practical needs.
> > That's what Linus Torvalds says about Linux.
>
> Torvalds said no such thing.  He wanted a system with the freedom to
> tamper with.  GNU was perfect for that, but had no kernel.  So he
> wrote a kernel.  For the purpose of being able to tamper with it.
> Which is one of the fundamental freedoms of free software.

Well there's your a practical reason. Things are being written because
someone needed them. I doubt that people write drivers just for the
heck of it.

> But if you make if impossible to combine your technical advantages
> with the upstream code base, there is nothing attractive in it for
> anyone except the proponents of proprietary systems.

Sorry, the "impossible" thing is simply not true. I've told you time
and again that I'll try to make it possible to get copyright
assignments for the icons at some point. (And there are no icons right
now anyways, so the whole discussion is academic).

And with regards to existing code, all that is not a publicly available
package which we're including in the distribution, i.e. all the code is
GPL'ed and I have signed the letter with the FSF. Many things have
already been made available for integration.
The rest of the appeal of Aquamacs comes from packages that have been
written by others. color-theme, pager, redo, a bunch of major modes
spring to mind. The fact that they're available without installation or
configuration is a major advantage to most users.

Heck I'd be honored if people showed an interest to integrate this, or
to make Aquamacs available for other systems. But don't forget that
Aquamacs changes the UI significantly, in part by redefining, patching,
advising functions. This change in UI is its main motivation. I don't
know if themes support such business.