Re: contributing to Emacs

[Yuchen Pei]

On Wed 2023-06-28 23:03:34 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > One problem with Hyperkitty is that it requires javascript to display
>   > any message, which is makes it kind of useless in non-js browsers like
>   > eww and lynx.
>
> Features that require Javascript are totallky unacceptable if the JS
> code is nonfree (see https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html)
> and problematical even if the JS code is free
> (see https://gnu.org/philosophy/wwworst-app-store.html).
>
> We should avoid web features that send JS code, whenever possible.
> Sending code to run immediately in the user's computer, in a way that
> gives the user community no feasible opportunity to study the code and
> release modified versions that people have a real option to use,
> undermines the freedom of free software.

This is why I think it would be a good idea to write emacs/elisp client
packages to replace web/javascript clients. The former is much more free
than javascript you can't change. Examples of such packages include
osm.el[1] for openstreetmap, sx.el[2] for stackexchange, org-jira[3] for
JIRA , as well as the buildbot package I'm submitting to ELPA[4]. It
does not solve the server side issue (SaaSS), but it does offer complete
freedom on the client side.

[1] https://github.com/minad/osm
[2] https://github.com/vermiculus/sx.el
[3] https://github.com/ahungry/org-jira
[4] https://g.ypei.me/buildbot.el.git/about/

Best,
Yuchen

-- 
PGP Key: 47F9 D050 1E11 8879 9040  4941 2126 7E93 EF86 DFD0
          <https://ypei.org/assets/ypei-pubkey.txt>