4 ms·
Seems to be a lot of hate for this policy, but the goal is simply universal interoperability, which is laudible. Otherwise we might as well go back to the days
by robert_tweed 10y ago
Seems to be a lot of hate for this policy, but the goal is simply universal interoperability, which is laudible. Otherwise we might as well go back to the days of IE6, since apparently there is absolutely no problem with Embrace-Extend-Extinguish, as long as we can have emojis on our Macbooks.
Edit: I should add that, since it doesn't appear to be a true interop issue, it may not be a sound decision here. I'm defending the rationale for the policy, not this particular application of it.
- eloisant 10y agoThe goal is "the lowest common denominator", while when making a cross-platform software it makes sense to have features that use the strength of each platform.
- Singletoned 10y ago> the goal is simply universal interoperability No, the goal is that "GNU Emacs should never offer people a practical reason to use some other system instead of GNU". Universal interoperability is just a side effect.
- robert_tweed 10y agoYou've got it backwards. Stallman may be disagreeable at times, but he's no fool. It's written this way to address the root cause of interop issues, which are themselves a secondary effect. Of course he wants people to choose GNU, but most importantly, he wants to preserve people's freedom to choose GNU, which means it must not become a second-class citizen to proprietory additions from Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else. If it's portable to GNU, the issue goes away. He says so explicitly.
- raverbashing 10y agoAnd nobody will pick the GNU solution when the non-GNU solution works better regardless of the OS
- bbatha 10y agoThough under this wording emacs would theoretically accept a GNU OS-only feature. It just happens that GNU OSes rarely offer extra features that emacs can take advantage of.