Re: not good proposal: "C-z <letter>" reserved for users

[Jean Louis]

* Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> [2021-02-13 11:29]:
> Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
> <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Jean Louis wrote:
> >
> >> I do not consider that survey authentic. But let us say it
> >> is. In my opinion that 30% from the survey is much greater
> >> number in reality. If we assume that 30% would apply also to
> >> those who reported Emacs installations in Debian GNU/Linux
> >> than there is at least 4800 users among those 16000 who
> >> reported using Emacs in that OS.
> >
> > Is this another survey I didn't hear about?
> >
> > Please always provide reference(s) when you make claims that
> > involve data.
> 
> I don't know where Jean Louis got his info from.  I assume the Debian
> survey is the "popcon" one.  You can find the results for Emacs here:
> 
> https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=emacs

That is one that I used, then I have amplified it by the estimated
number of Ubuntu users and used the percentage of Emacs users in
popularity contest to find about estimated number of total Emacs
users. My email is somewhere in the mailing lists.

> The Emacs usage survey mentioned was shared on Emacs-Devel but not here.
> I don't know why.  It was shared in some other places too.  I get the
> impression it was by someone very modern who isn't into things like
> email lists.

I think that author rushed and unintentionally neglected possible
communication channels. 

> I don't know if it's millions, but lots of people use Emacs.  As you can
> see, the Debian survey shows about 14000.  Also, there are 49000
> subscribers to Emacs Reddit.  I suspect not every Emacs user is on
> Reddit, so the number is probably higher than 49000.

There are categories how people use Emacs. Only enthusiastic ones will
report on bug reporting lists or public websites. But if we speak of
global number of users that must be in millions.

Some references:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/80379/how-many-ubuntu-users-are-there-worldwide#80383

They wish to have 200 million Ubuntu users in 2015:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/mark-shuttleworth-delivers-uds-keynote-address-sets-goal-for-200-million-ubuntu-users-in-4-years

Now Debian Popularity Contest:
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=emacs

Let us say the number of "emacs" installation is 13% in Debian.

The rank shows 6.83% among all packages. Correct me if I am
wrong. Does that 6.83% mean that among all packages installed 6.83% of
users installed Emacs? I am not sure any more.

dpkg number of installations is 204612 and dpkg is on first place
emacs number of installations is 13973 and

(defun pct-of-number-in-total (number total)
  "Return the percentage that NUMBER represents in a TOTAL."
  (let* ((percent (/ (float total) 100))
         (percentage (/ (float number) percent)))
    percentage))

(pct-of-number-in-total 13973 204612) yields 6.8290227357144255

Popularity contest is not reported by all users, just by some.

I am assuming that Ubuntu users are very similar to Debian users. Then
it means to me that 6.82% users of supposed 200 million of Ubuntu
users must be also Emacs users.

That alone would make 13,640,000 Emacs users.

There is number of millions of uncounted Debian users, Arch Linux
users, other GNU/Linux users and BSD derivatives and so many other
distributions with Emacs inside. Add that to the amount above.

There are those enthusiastic users, having or showing great excitement
and interest, and there are those who are just users without great
excitement. 

There is great number of Bash users who are not enthusiastic, would
never report any bugs, would not publish programs or would not program
at all, but would be using shell with unimpressed "So what?"
statement. I am just assuming that ratio of enthusiastic Bash users is
so much less to the number of non enthusiastic users than Emacs'
ratio. Do people form online communities around Bash? Do they have
forums? Do they participate equally in mailing lists? That is how I
think of enthusiastic users in Bash world. The ratio is probably less
than the number of enthusiastic users in Emacs.

Those enthusiastic will report somewhere, we know about them at least
as commenters, bug reporters, readers of the forum if not
participants. Somewhat enthusiastic user will read at least what
others are saying. Non-enthusiastic will not even read it, but will be
user.

When changing something in Emacs we better think on the impact of all
users.

There is large number of proprietary software users who install free
software VPS-es and dedicated servers worldwide, one part of them may
expect the decades old function to work. Those are professionals
providing various software. In my opinion there is more proprietary
software users who use free software on VPS-es and dedicated servers
than exclusively free software users. Those are business makers,
business mostly come from proprietary software makers and users. That
is how I perceive the world of today. They may not be GNU/Linux users
at all -- but they may be Windows users who spawn VPS-es and/or use
dedicated servers for business, setting up databases for customers,
maintaining their operating systems, websites, serious or crucial
business operations. Such users will never even report in.  Debian
popularity contest. They use software for business, not for fan.

Then we come here on our mailing lists and among 20 people or maybe 50
people, somebody may decide capriciously to break some decades old
function or some key binding for the sake of future reservation of
imaginary third party packages, something like that. Just few of those
50 people will be thinking on the worldwide impact. Some will thinkg
that Emacs users report to Emacs mailing lists, and if those do not
report, they cannot be Emacs users and will assume that changes impact
only those who report to Emacs list. Just few of wise people will be
aware of the global impact.

Surely, Emacs is distributed without warranty, but legal liability
does not exclude human responsibility, that is why developers work on
improving it. They do carry large responsibilities. And they have to
be enough confident to do anything including breaking some
compatibilities and destryoing some things in exchange for creation of
new things. That is why there is longer period of time until new Emacs
development versions become "stable".

Breaking some function may then impact users, their work, their
efforts, their money flow, they may lose data, they may even lose a
job if they lose data, it may impact their life and families.

Before some decades I worked for free in humanitarian
organization. Computer got stuck. It was running proprietary Windoze
system on good hardware. The Windoze system froze. There was no way to
shut it down. It had to be hard reset and after hard reset there was
no data on hard disk any more. Hard disk worked without
problems. There was no virus or anything. Data of the work of last 6
months was lost, including some letters, numbers, etc. All important
and valuable. Would that not be humanitarian organization I would have
or could probably lose the job when such thing happens regardless if
it was not my fault. Maybe family could depend of the person
there.

One mistake in program does have butterfly effects worldwide.[1]

So removing a function in Emacs that is assumed to be there by
millions of users does have some effect and impact on those users.

They may never report about it. They may be affected without
importing.


Jean


1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect