Re: Emacs project mission (was Re: "If you're still seeing problems, please reopen." [

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

"Perry E. Metzger" <address@hidden> writes:

> Unfortunately, there's a potential negative cycle here. A certain
> percentage of users of free software become developers. If we start
> starving ourselves of users of Emacs, we end up becoming starved of
> developers for Emacs, too.

Indeed.  Without attracting new users (and therefore new developers),
Emacs is moribund.

Kids these days don't use email.  Have a look at all the enthusiastic
people talking about Emacs on reddit and Stackexchange -- it apparently
never occurs to many of them that it's even an option so fire off an
email to emacs-devel or use `M-x report-emacs-bug': It's just so far
outside their experience of how things work.

So I think having a modern interface for users to communicate with
developers is vital, because that is how we'll get more developers in
the long run.  The trick is finding one that also supports the way more
er seasoned developers like to work, which is (basically) the way we
work now.

It sounds like Gitlab has most of what we need, but not everything, and
there seems to be a depressing dearth of development towards that goal.
Perhaps if we committed it might make some Gitlab peeps also commit to
making this work: That is, we say "If Gitlab grows feature X, Y and Z,
then Emacs development is definitely moving to Gitlab", that might spur
some enthusiasm. 

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no