Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > > My point is that they are not so rare -- there is a systematic tendency
  > > for that to happen.

  > What is the basis for your impression that such a tendency exists?

I've pointed out the steps of the pathway.

1. A bug is reported.  Most of us are not interested in fixing that bug
   so we don't read the messages about it.
2. People discussing it in the bug thread propose
   and agree on a certain change.
3. It happens to be a change in user interface.
4. They implement it without ever discussing it on emacs-devel.
5. Before we notice the change, a new release is made.
6. Some of us object and we are told, "Because this change has been in a
   release, we will not undo it (or even revert the default) unless there
   are strong objections."

How often does this happen?  I don't know.  But why let it happen?

I have proposed several ways to avoid it.  I'm not wedded to any of
them; I just want to stop it from happening again.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)