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As someone who uses Emacs for (almost) all my editing needs and has done for about 17 years I just don’t understand how you can have these beliefs. LSP-mode is

by almost 5y ago

As someone who uses Emacs for (almost) all my editing needs and has done for about 17 years I just don’t understand how you can have these beliefs. LSP-mode is great and now with things like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs getting setup and getting things reasonably configured is a lot easier. But still! VSCode is pretty cool and is easy to use right out of the box. It does some things with ease that would be very hard with Emacs. And JetBrains looks like it does some amazing stuff. I still end up sticking with Emacs myself, but the idea that that it’s perfect and simple and for everyone and that there’s no sensible reasons to use the other options is just insane.

ilovecaching 5y ago
It amazes me there are Emacs users that don’t understand the importance of free software. You’re using the editor devised by the free software foundation, but you only want to talk about convenience. Convenience is not an excuse to switch to corporate made closed source spyware.
- efficax 5y ago
  How many of us do you think work on "free" software? I write proprietary software and i use proprietary software to do it because it pays my mortgage. I drank the fsf Kool aid as a kid, then i grew up and had to put a roof over my head and my children's. It's great that some people get to make a living producing free as in speech software, but that's kind of like getting into the NBA. The rest of us have to contend with reality
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    You're presenting a false dichotomy: most software is neither proprietary or FOSS; it's in-house, custom-developed functionality, that's never released/available outside of the business that created it. Its only "user" is the business that made it; they have full access to the source (unless they deleted it; whoops!), are not bound by its copyright (since they're the owners), etc. The FSF has no problem with that. Although my first job was working on FOSS, all the ones since have been working on such bespoke, in-house software. To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a job ad for proprietary software (as in, closed-source software that runs on end-user machines). A few subtleties: - Javascript is probably a glaring exception. Opinions differ on whether it should count as shipping proprietary software (the FSF think it is, many HNers probably consider it less clear-cut). For what it's worth, the little JS I've written professionally has always been of a progressive, site-still-works-without-it form. - Some of that never-released software may be accessible to others, e.g. Google's search software can be accessed via google.com. The AGPL has an interesting take on that particular niche. - Sometimes the human end-users of this software have very limited access/control over it, e.g. if Walmart maintains its own checkout software, those operating the checkouts probably can't access the source, etc. However, that's nothing to do with copyright, FOSS, etc. it's just a business decision, presumably covered by employment contracts (e.g. "in the course of your work you may be given access to computer systems; these are confidential, and you must not hack/compromise/etc.").
- almost 5y ago
  I just can't think why you might have trouble convincing people to try it :p But you yourself bought up convenience in your original comment. If your argument is a purely moral one then no need to specify how little fiddling is required to get LSP working. But I do think if your only argument is yelling at people about it being immoral to use VSCode you ain't going to get far. Why not talk about the cool things Emacs has while acknowledging the things it still has that could be improved? VSCode is open source by the way, MIT not GPL but you can go compile it yourself (or use VSCodium).
  - pritambaral 4y ago
    > VSCode is open source by the way ... The extensions marketplace requires you to use the closed source version. Quite a few of VS Code's best extensions are also completely closed source. VS Code is already on the same path that Google took with "Open Source" Android.
- tored 5y ago
  The largest spy organisation in the world, Google, uses mostly free software.
- hbn 5y ago
  I'm sure your boss will be real impressed by how ethical you are as your colleagues get their work done 2x faster than you

by almost 5y ago

ilovecaching 5y ago

It amazes me there are Emacs users that don’t understand the importance of free software. You’re using the editor devised by the free software foundation, but you only want to talk about convenience. Convenience is not an excuse to switch to corporate made closed source spyware.

efficax 5y ago
How many of us do you think work on "free" software? I write proprietary software and i use proprietary software to do it because it pays my mortgage. I drank the fsf Kool aid as a kid, then i grew up and had to put a roof over my head and my children's. It's great that some people get to make a living producing free as in speech software, but that's kind of like getting into the NBA. The rest of us have to contend with reality
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  You're presenting a false dichotomy: most software is neither proprietary or FOSS; it's in-house, custom-developed functionality, that's never released/available outside of the business that created it. Its only "user" is the business that made it; they have full access to the source (unless they deleted it; whoops!), are not bound by its copyright (since they're the owners), etc. The FSF has no problem with that. Although my first job was working on FOSS, all the ones since have been working on such bespoke, in-house software. To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a job ad for proprietary software (as in, closed-source software that runs on end-user machines). A few subtleties: - Javascript is probably a glaring exception. Opinions differ on whether it should count as shipping proprietary software (the FSF think it is, many HNers probably consider it less clear-cut). For what it's worth, the little JS I've written professionally has always been of a progressive, site-still-works-without-it form. - Some of that never-released software may be accessible to others, e.g. Google's search software can be accessed via google.com. The AGPL has an interesting take on that particular niche. - Sometimes the human end-users of this software have very limited access/control over it, e.g. if Walmart maintains its own checkout software, those operating the checkouts probably can't access the source, etc. However, that's nothing to do with copyright, FOSS, etc. it's just a business decision, presumably covered by employment contracts (e.g. "in the course of your work you may be given access to computer systems; these are confidential, and you must not hack/compromise/etc.").
almost 5y ago
I just can't think why you might have trouble convincing people to try it :p But you yourself bought up convenience in your original comment. If your argument is a purely moral one then no need to specify how little fiddling is required to get LSP working. But I do think if your only argument is yelling at people about it being immoral to use VSCode you ain't going to get far. Why not talk about the cool things Emacs has while acknowledging the things it still has that could be improved? VSCode is open source by the way, MIT not GPL but you can go compile it yourself (or use VSCodium).
- pritambaral 4y ago
  > VSCode is open source by the way ... The extensions marketplace requires you to use the closed source version. Quite a few of VS Code's best extensions are also completely closed source. VS Code is already on the same path that Google took with "Open Source" Android.
tored 5y ago
The largest spy organisation in the world, Google, uses mostly free software.
hbn 5y ago
I'm sure your boss will be real impressed by how ethical you are as your colleagues get their work done 2x faster than you