From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Richard Stallman Subject: bug#32722: bug#32722: bug#32722: bug#32722: 26.1; Org-publish depend on non-free platform ? Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2018 22:13:45 -0400 Message-ID: References: <531a7f93882cc0d5d09700457d06ea082f47569b.camel@flqt.fr> <83sh2ck42e.fsf@gnu.org> <87va73gn90.fsf@nicolasgoaziou.fr> <83efdqg32d.fsf@gnu.org> <87lg7yfraw.fsf@nicolasgoaziou.fr> <874leme9vp.fsf@aminb.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:55817) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1g3AxK-0004yG-F0 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 20 Sep 2018 22:14:07 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1g3AxI-0001D3-IO for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 20 Sep 2018 22:14:06 -0400 Sender: "Debbugs-submit" Resent-Message-ID: In-Reply-To: (message from Joe Corneli on Thu, 20 Sep 2018 11:43:25 +0100) List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Emacs-orgmode" To: Joe Corneli Cc: n@flqt.fr, amin@gnu.org, 32722@debbugs.gnu.org, rjhorniii@gmail.com, kaushal.modi@gmail.com [[[ 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. ]]] > There are a handful of references to MELPA inside Emacs. Are these to > be discouraged? The question is rather broad, so I can only say "it depends". Whether a reference to software outside Emacs is good or bad depends on its semantics -- that is, on what it says _about_ the software that it references -- and on circumstances. Here's a general answer in terms of rules and circumstances. The first question is, does the references tend to encourage, recommend, or lead users to install and use some outside software? If it doesn't, there isn't an issue. In that case, it would normally be a comment in the code, not a message shown to the Emacs user. If it does tend to lead users to install some program, the next question is, is that program free? If not, it may be a moral problem, but that depends. If the code encourages uses of Emacs by users of widely used nonfree program Foo, that's ok. If the code encourages use of nonfree program Foo by users of Emacs, that's bad, so we should remove the message _and_ the code immediately. If the other program is free, the next question is, should this job be done by part of Emacs, or should it be separate? If logically it should be a separate program, such as find, GCC or LaTeX, then it is fine to encourage Emacs users to install it and for Emacs to invoke it. If logically it should be part of Emacs, we should arrange to do the job with code that IS part of Emacs. We could do that by merging the program into Emacs, or packaging it with Emacs, if those are possible. Or we could do it by writing new code. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)