rms@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) (04/15/91)
[I'm sending this message to help-gnu-emacs in response to another
message on that mailing list.]
There are some, in fact, that are unlikely ever to be supported by
GNU products. Would it make sense then to request that people
limit recommending proprietary products to only those environments
not supported?
This doesn't make sense as a way for the GNU project to operate. The
purpose of the project is to promote the freedom to share and change
software. Recommendations for proprietary software can't aid this.
They do the opposite: by implicitly suggesting that the proprietary
program is a good thing, they encourage people to be less concerned
with the issue of freedom. In this way they work directly against
what the GNU project stands for.
It's true that most people aren't prepared to do with no program at
all simply because no free program is available. And people will
probably find out about available proprietary software whether or not
it is advertised in help-gnu-emacs. However, if people are going to
use proprietary programs anyway, that doesn't mean that the GNU
project ought to provide space for advertising them. When something
bad is inevitable, it is still good to refuse to help bring it about.
By not participating in promoting proprietary software, we communicate
something important about how the world ought to be.
The GNU project focuses on specific kinds of software for a specific
class of platforms, as a practical matter. However, the idea behind
the GNU project is not limited to the facilities we happen to have
written so far. Even if no GNU program exists for a certain
application and platform, somebody else might be inspired by the GNU
project to write one. Even if that program were irrelevant to the GNU
system (such as if it ran on MS-DOG), it would still be a success of
the GNU spirit.
In the case of editors for small machines, GNU ideas about free
software probably helped encourage the creation of Freemacs as well as
its free availability. Part of the reason free alternatives are now
available is the work of the FSF to communicate why they ought to be.
Which includes my occasional messages reminding people not to use the
FSF mailing lists to recommend proprietary software.