[paddy_m]

This is due to Richard Stalllman. He thinks that integrating "non-free" alternatives when free alternatives don't yet exist slows down free software development. Not just free as in freedom alternatives, not just free as in GPL licensed, but free as in FSF controlled projects. He did the same thing with linking extensions to GCC, LLVM debugger integration into emacs (fuzzy on that one), possibly treesitter into emacs, bzr vs git for emacs code source control, and a CI build farm for emacs. In each one of those cases, he eventually relented and the core project, eventually integrated the non-free alternative years later.

In the meantime this delaying didn't stop the non-free alternatives, but it did slow down adoption of the core project. This is attrocious project management that is driving people to non-free software. In the most egregious cases (bzr and CI build farm), it was done only because of his ego and wanting the FSF to matter.

[benreesman]

A lot of us are grateful in some abstract way for all the foundational work RMS did both technically and organizationally to preserve what remaining software freedoms we still have, but got off the bus a long time ago. He got really weird and it was on some "no fly zone" shit.

There's an `emacs` community that recognizes the history without being involved in any contemporary sense.

[bowsamic]

Why did you?

[7e]

Huh? Open source licenses long predate Stallman. He was, at best, an opportunist who tried to coopt the OSS movement and take it into a kooky ideological niche.

[7e]

Do you remember how the world got all kinds of weird cults before we got good at identifying cults and the phenomenon of cults? Well, the FSF/GPL is one of those. Many people still need to be deprogrammed.

[benreesman]

I never said that Stallman invented open source (he didn't) or that his motives for starting GNU up after the Symbolics fiasco were pure and high-minded (they were petty), or that the contemporary FSF is a force for good (it's not, c.f. glibc dynamic link lock in on a backdoored resolver SONAME chain and Drepper's weird ties).

I said he did a lot of foundational work that's still important today.

I acknowledged a contribution, I didn't beatify him.

[skydhash]

Where would they integrate it. Emacs is a small core of C code. Almost everything is Elisp and in the same standing as third party packages. I’m not seeing what being in emacs core brings to an AI package?

[spauldo]

It'd be no different than eglot, project.el, etc. Third party packages experiment with stuff, then a stable implementation appears in core.

[paddy_m]

That would be a reasonable stance if the difference were in incubating a new project vs excluding functionality from blessing because it interfaces with non free software. The functionality I'm talking about is excluded because of the latter.

[spauldo]

In that case it'd just live on in Melpa regardless of what the mailing list thinks.

[paddy_m]

Well the linking into GCC was a C code issue. For emacs, there is a large collection of elisp that is shipped with the official package. Preventing worthy enhancements of that core package solely in the name of a distorted view of freedom hinders emacs and the adoption of emacs.

[Guthur]

You clearly misunderstood the problem.

The entities he is so adamant against are not benign or passive, they actively try to capture your freedom for rent seeking behaviour.

Microsoft, Apple, Amazon etc, have not got to where they are without this behaviour and they are so powerful that they have in many cases captured even public money from large governments for decades and are exceptionally sticky once allowed in.

LLM provide an exceptional opportunity for us to free ourselves from these captor interests, but we need to looking to develop them.

RMS has been proven correct on so many things from standard Microsoft behaviour, and planned obsolete to the licensing rug pulls of so called open source projects.

The question is not about stopping non free, that's a ridiculous objective, but if you don't have any principles you are going to have nothing solid to stand on in response to their nefarious and extractive behaviour.

[spauldo]

The objective is very much to stop non-free software. It always has been. It's not secret - it's explicitly why the FSF exists.

And that's a good thing, for the most part. Someone needs to hold the hard-line stance. It'll never happen, but it pulls things in that direction. We're all free to do what we like and use whatever software we choose, and part of the reason we have that choice is because the hardliners refuse to budge.

It does mean they make unrealistic demands and occasionally hold back useful functionality, but it's better than not having them around.

[paddy_m]

I haven't misunderstood the problems that RMS talks about, I agree with his prescient analysis. I firmly disagree that RMS the person is the best person to lead a software producing organization that aims to deliver a free future.

A simple reductive example. Imagine a great software leader that leads an org that writes great code and generally achieves the org's goals, but once a week, they say something offensive that discourages 1/10th of new users. A better leader would be someone who does all of the same things, except for the offensive comments.

I am saying that RMS makes offensive distracting comments, and regularly makes project manager choices that slow the adoption of free software. If you criticize him, people come back to "but he's right philosophically" which he is, and that misses the point. He has wrapped the FSF into an ego play for himself where he is in control or at least an important roadblock to software progress. If RMS cared as much about software freedom (as opposed to his ego) as he says, he would work to allow better leaders to develop and have power in the FSF org.

[qiine]

this is just sad