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> The Emacs devs definitely are biased in favor of free platforms This strikes me as shortsighted. Most of us don't have much control over the platform we use.

> The Emacs devs definitely are biased in favor of free platforms This strikes me as shortsighted. Most of us don't have much control over the platform we use. I, for example, was a very happy (even mildly evangelistic) emacs user up until my last job change. The new company issued me a Windows laptop. After a couple days of fussing with trying to get it to work acceptably well on either native Windows or WSL, I finally gave up and switched to vscode. This probably spells the doom of my use of emacs for hobby work, too. Virtually all of my programming time happens at work these days, so my emacs proficiency is rapidly declining. Soon not even nostalgia will be able to overcome the inconvenience of using an editor that's becoming decreasingly familiar by the day. I suppose I am only one person and I don't speak for everyone, but being able to spare at least a little more love for Windows users might have prevented at least this one developer from attriting out of the community.

bachmeier 4y ago
> This strikes me as shortsighted. More likely it simply reflects the platform they use.
- macintux 4y ago
  Agreed. You'd have to pay me to improve software under Windows, because I do my best to never have to use it.
ubermonkey 4y ago
>This strikes me as shortsighted. Most of us don't have much control over the platform we use. Well, that's the thing. This is NOT my POV, but I have definitely heard true-believer libre/Free software people opine that making it too easy to use Free software on nonFree platforms isn't desirable. I think this is a silly perspective, but it's definitely one that's out there.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  What I worry about there is that letting it become too inconvenient to use Free development tools on non-Free platforms will eventually harm the Free Software community's ability to produce competitive Free software, by encouraging a brain drain in the communities that develop Free development tools.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    It's not an "eventually" thing. It's happening now, and has been happening for a long time. I don't use much libre software in my day to day (desktop) life because most of it is only good enough if you feel strongly that libre is a value unto itself, and worth hassle. I mostly don't. I mean, in some places, there's definite parity or even advantages on the libre side, but holy crap on the desktop it's bleak.

bachmeier 4y ago

> This strikes me as shortsighted. More likely it simply reflects the platform they use.

macintux 4y ago
Agreed. You'd have to pay me to improve software under Windows, because I do my best to never have to use it.

ubermonkey 4y ago

>This strikes me as shortsighted. Most of us don't have much control over the platform we use. Well, that's the thing. This is NOT my POV, but I have definitely heard true-believer libre/Free software people opine that making it too easy to use Free software on nonFree platforms isn't desirable. I think this is a silly perspective, but it's definitely one that's out there.

mumblemumble 4y ago
What I worry about there is that letting it become too inconvenient to use Free development tools on non-Free platforms will eventually harm the Free Software community's ability to produce competitive Free software, by encouraging a brain drain in the communities that develop Free development tools.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  It's not an "eventually" thing. It's happening now, and has been happening for a long time. I don't use much libre software in my day to day (desktop) life because most of it is only good enough if you feel strongly that libre is a value unto itself, and worth hassle. I mostly don't. I mean, in some places, there's definite parity or even advantages on the libre side, but holy crap on the desktop it's bleak.