Re: "like other editors" [was: Re: Poll about proposed change in DEL (aka Backspace) and Delete]

[Richard Stallman]

The abstract arguments about this change have already been brought up
in discussions among the Emacs developers.  That is not the help we
need.

What I hope the poll will provide is additional factual information on
how the change affects Emacs users.  Thus, the poll asks you how the
change affects you in your own editing.  Without the poll, we have to
try to guess that.  With the poll, we will know.

    Secondly, there are places in the world where people haven't ever used 
    Windows; instead, their first and only experience with computers is with 
    Linux.

You can't have an experience with Linux as an end user, because Linux
is a kernel.  It has no user interface, and users don't talk to it
directly.

Since you are thinking of an operating system that might replace
Windows, I am sure the system you have in mind is the GNU system,
which is typically used with Linux.

When you talk about the system, please don't call it "Linux".  If you
do that, you give the credit for our work to someone else who got
involved much later and did a smaller part of the system.  Would you
please call the system "GNU/Linux" and give us equal mention?

For more explanation, see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html
and http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html for historical
background.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
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