6 ms·

Then fork it and run it in the way you see fit.

Dylan16807 4y ago
The existing software is already that fork, isn't it? Even ignoring the other reasons that lazy counter is bad to throw out.
- skissane 4y ago
  XEmacs was a fork of GNU Emacs, driven by technical and philosophical disagreements with RMS. For a while it was rather popular, but then it died. Its failure is a counterargument to these complaints about RMS' management style–if his decisions are really as bad as some people say, why didn't the fork succeed? And why won't any of the complainers start up a new fork themselves, or revive the moribund XEmacs fork? You might be thinking of GCC – the current GCC is descended from a fork of GCC (EGCS). RMS agreed to let the forkers take over the official project. GNU Emacs itself is a fork of Gosling Emacs. The original Emacs was written in TECO, a rather horrendous language. Soon, people started writing Emacs clones in Lisp – Multics Emacs, and some of the Lisp Machine editors. James Gosling wrote the first Emacs for Unix platforms; for an extension language, he invented "Mocklisp", which resembled Lisp on the surface, but lacked its power and generality. GNU Emacs started out as a fork of Gosling Emacs, adding a real Lisp instead of Mocklisp. Gosling made his Emacs freely available under an unclear license, and then sold it to a commercial firm and declared its original free distribution rescinded. To get away from that legal problem, RMS rewrote all the remaining Gosling Emacs code.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Some of us found in XEmacs the escape route in the lack of IDEs on the UNIX world. XEmacs failed, because eventually IDEs became a thing on UNIX platforms and that is where we went, to the toolset we were missing, not Emacs.
wmf 4y ago
That's already done. For example, Ubuntu has probably brought more people to free software than Debian. The argument I and other people are making is that the FSF's goals are being achieved but not by the FSF.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  Sorry. I didn't read your comment as a criticism of the FSF because they don't live up to their ideals. And you didn't initially provide an organisation that did it better. That's fair enough.
- bruce511 4y ago
  True. Open source software is waaay bigger than Free software. And free software delivered by the FSF is a drop in the bucket of all software-available-in-source-code-format. This is not a bad thing, nor a reflection that the FSF is doing it wrong. Indeed it is a sign they are doing it right. Ultimately all open software exists _because_ of the FSF. They set the marker in the ground, they set the standard the rest if us don't quite live up to. Their role is not to produce all the code, their role is to explain the freedoms well enough so that enough other people believe in some, or all, of those freedoms. The two main threads of the article are hardware, and emacs. Depending on how far down the stack you want to go (open microcode in your CPU?) it's generally possible to get hardware open enough for you to do anything you like. Not all hardware is open, sure, but there are enough choices. Yes there are still closed drivers (ironic given what kicked RMS off in the first place) but careful choices play a role here. That said, keeping an eye in the hardware, and keeping open hardware in our minds, is an excellent reason for the FSF to exist. Their job is not to win the war, its to make us care about the war at all. We will win it, if we care about it. Emacs is a very specific example of a program run by a person who has beliefs. He builds that program to conform to those beliefs, not the beliefs of his user base. In this case he's the printer maker not wanting his printer to work on the new hardware. His goal is not to make "the world's best editor" - his goal us to "make the world's best editor that promotes free software ideals." Ironically, if you don't like that, you can take his work and built on it however _you_ like. He not only represents the original problem, he presents the ongoing solution. The Freedoms are explicit. They don't give the user rights over the developer. They give the user rights to add their own work to the equation. Emphasis on work. The FSF is not fighting the wrong war. They are not fighting at all. They are setting a marker in the ground saying "this is what could be." Our job is to notice, and care.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

The existing software is already that fork, isn't it? Even ignoring the other reasons that lazy counter is bad to throw out.

skissane 4y ago
XEmacs was a fork of GNU Emacs, driven by technical and philosophical disagreements with RMS. For a while it was rather popular, but then it died. Its failure is a counterargument to these complaints about RMS' management style–if his decisions are really as bad as some people say, why didn't the fork succeed? And why won't any of the complainers start up a new fork themselves, or revive the moribund XEmacs fork? You might be thinking of GCC – the current GCC is descended from a fork of GCC (EGCS). RMS agreed to let the forkers take over the official project. GNU Emacs itself is a fork of Gosling Emacs. The original Emacs was written in TECO, a rather horrendous language. Soon, people started writing Emacs clones in Lisp – Multics Emacs, and some of the Lisp Machine editors. James Gosling wrote the first Emacs for Unix platforms; for an extension language, he invented "Mocklisp", which resembled Lisp on the surface, but lacked its power and generality. GNU Emacs started out as a fork of Gosling Emacs, adding a real Lisp instead of Mocklisp. Gosling made his Emacs freely available under an unclear license, and then sold it to a commercial firm and declared its original free distribution rescinded. To get away from that legal problem, RMS rewrote all the remaining Gosling Emacs code.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Some of us found in XEmacs the escape route in the lack of IDEs on the UNIX world. XEmacs failed, because eventually IDEs became a thing on UNIX platforms and that is where we went, to the toolset we were missing, not Emacs.

wmf 4y ago

That's already done. For example, Ubuntu has probably brought more people to free software than Debian. The argument I and other people are making is that the FSF's goals are being achieved but not by the FSF.

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
Sorry. I didn't read your comment as a criticism of the FSF because they don't live up to their ideals. And you didn't initially provide an organisation that did it better. That's fair enough.
bruce511 4y ago
True. Open source software is waaay bigger than Free software. And free software delivered by the FSF is a drop in the bucket of all software-available-in-source-code-format. This is not a bad thing, nor a reflection that the FSF is doing it wrong. Indeed it is a sign they are doing it right. Ultimately all open software exists _because_ of the FSF. They set the marker in the ground, they set the standard the rest if us don't quite live up to. Their role is not to produce all the code, their role is to explain the freedoms well enough so that enough other people believe in some, or all, of those freedoms. The two main threads of the article are hardware, and emacs. Depending on how far down the stack you want to go (open microcode in your CPU?) it's generally possible to get hardware open enough for you to do anything you like. Not all hardware is open, sure, but there are enough choices. Yes there are still closed drivers (ironic given what kicked RMS off in the first place) but careful choices play a role here. That said, keeping an eye in the hardware, and keeping open hardware in our minds, is an excellent reason for the FSF to exist. Their job is not to win the war, its to make us care about the war at all. We will win it, if we care about it. Emacs is a very specific example of a program run by a person who has beliefs. He builds that program to conform to those beliefs, not the beliefs of his user base. In this case he's the printer maker not wanting his printer to work on the new hardware. His goal is not to make "the world's best editor" - his goal us to "make the world's best editor that promotes free software ideals." Ironically, if you don't like that, you can take his work and built on it however _you_ like. He not only represents the original problem, he presents the ongoing solution. The Freedoms are explicit. They don't give the user rights over the developer. They give the user rights to add their own work to the equation. Emphasis on work. The FSF is not fighting the wrong war. They are not fighting at all. They are setting a marker in the ground saying "this is what could be." Our job is to notice, and care.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]