[nathanb]

That's a very positive spin on the message. The way I read it is that developers and maintainers are encouraged to make Emacs work better on free than non-free platforms.

This is, sadly, self-defeating. If Emacs were widely recognized as the best editor (or whatever of its myriad functions you use it for), "works best on GNU/Linux" could advance the cause of free software. As it stands, though, "only works well on GNU/Linux" instead just means that fewer people will be using it.