Re: Emacs Webapp/Plugin

[William Gardella]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     > For one thing, I am concerned people might use it in Chrome, which
>     > is nonfree software with a universal back door.  If that caught on,
>     > it would be a disaster in terms of our primary goal: giving users
>     > freedom.
>
>     Wait, doesn't Emacs run on lots of nonfree systems?
>
> Yes, it does.  However, in this scenario, Emacs would do less of the
> job than it does now, and would depend on more proprietary software.
> That is a step in the wrong direction.
>
>     >     The underlying premise is that there are no "desktop" apps
>     >     available on this imagined system, just web apps and browser
>     >     plugins.
>
>     > That IS a disaster, in terms of users' freedom.  It pushes users
>     > into total dependence on servers.
>
>     What if it's their server ...?
>
> IF it is the user's own server, there's nothing wrong with using using
> that server.  But that is not the way Google intends Chromeboxes to be
> used, not probably the way most people will use them.

To make a small, tangential point here, there is Elnode (
https://github.com/nicferrier/elnode/ ) which is a kind of dynamic web
framework for Emacs Lisp, built on the idea of using asynchronous
Emacsen as subprocesses to do the job of serving pages.  As noted in the
documentation, one project proposal from the author is the idea of
implementing an emacsclient under elnode.  That would have the potential
to offer users of all browsers (not just Chrom[ium] or Firefox or
whatever) a way to use a remote Emacs on systems where all they have
access to is a browser.