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by ithkuil 5435 days ago
"[..]We are, in essence, distributing binary blobs with Emacs" (Chong Yidong)

Note the "in essence". They are not actually distributing binary blobs, they are distributing generated code made with a parser generator which they are not distributing, and they argue that this is equivalent of distributing binary code for all practical purposes, as the user "may neither fix nor extend the existing functionality."

2 comments

The issue is not that they aren't distributing the parser generator, it's that they're not distributing the grammars that are the input to the generator.
That post says they have to delete the old versions, but... If what you've said it true, they could just distribute the parser generator, or something that does the same job.

It's not unfixable.

The post clearly says they have to add the source or delete them.