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Re: New maintainer


From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: New maintainer
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2015 13:07:25 -0400

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I think you've put it rightly and clearly.  We don't exclude people
who use proprietary software, or even people who develope proprietary
software, from using Emacs or even from developing Emacs.

I will mention one abstract subpoint where I disagree with what you
said.

  >   At any rate, freedom does not mean a
  > different prescribed path but a choice.

I think that defining freedom as "choice" is a mistaken approach.  All
else being equal, more freedom generally means you have more choices,
but defining freedom in terms of the number of choices leads to
paradoxes.

I define freedom as "having control of one's own life".
Freedom in one's computing means having control over how it is done,
which requires control over the software that does it.

Your church analogy was a good one, but let's make sure no one
misunderstands it as more than an analogy.  The Church of Emacs is
pure humor.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.




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