Is this how we will keep Emacs alive for another 40 years–by artificially holding back the language and viciously attacking those who object?
Luckily Emacs and Emacs Lisp still have enough attraction that the package ecosystem will probably stay alive, at least there nobody needs to worry about copyright assignment (except for Elpa) and people’s opinions on mailinglists.
But recently I saw that there is also a lot of value in contributions to the core with Eglot, tree-sitter, native-compilation, such improvements are important to keep Emacs attractive for newcomers. But it would be a shame if newcomers were discouraged from contributions to the core, ideally it should be a more inviting place.
But to be honest this is what I came to expect from free-software mailinglists, where everybody can voice their opinion and you can yourself be more heard just by being “louder” (posting more often), if you have the time. Especially if you add to that some level of historical authority. For mental health I find it best to just ignore the discussions or if I’m bored I take some popcorn and take a looks at what the drama is about 🍿. I think that’s a social problem of group dynamics but I’m no expert and have no idea how to solve this.
My opinions regarding RMS are very mixed nowadays. I’m happy if he sticks to technical discussions, where he has at least some background knowledge, even if it might be dated. As long as his opinion is not held higher than others due to him being RMS, I think it might be time to pass on the baton in this regard. He already did officially as a maintainer long ago but his opinions still find a large audience). I think it would already help if everybody would agree he is just human. I’m also opinionated to some level and will probably be much more so when I get older 🤷.
Luckily Emacs and Emacs Lisp still have enough attraction that the package ecosystem will probably stay alive, at least there nobody needs to worry about copyright assignment (except for Elpa) and people’s opinions on mailinglists.
But recently I saw that there is also a lot of value in contributions to the core with Eglot, tree-sitter, native-compilation, such improvements are important to keep Emacs attractive for newcomers. But it would be a shame if newcomers were discouraged from contributions to the core, ideally it should be a more inviting place.
But to be honest this is what I came to expect from free-software mailinglists, where everybody can voice their opinion and you can yourself be more heard just by being “louder” (posting more often), if you have the time. Especially if you add to that some level of historical authority. For mental health I find it best to just ignore the discussions or if I’m bored I take some popcorn and take a looks at what the drama is about 🍿. I think that’s a social problem of group dynamics but I’m no expert and have no idea how to solve this.
My opinions regarding RMS are very mixed nowadays. I’m happy if he sticks to technical discussions, where he has at least some background knowledge, even if it might be dated. As long as his opinion is not held higher than others due to him being RMS, I think it might be time to pass on the baton in this regard. He already did officially as a maintainer long ago but his opinions still find a large audience). I think it would already help if everybody would agree he is just human. I’m also opinionated to some level and will probably be much more so when I get older 🤷.