Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[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. ]]]

  > Not mentioning MELPA as an option because you feel uncomfortable about
  > it will distort survey results, especially for the part where you ask
  > what package archives people use.

That is ok.  This is not a research project.  The reason we are
interested in a survey's results is to make practical decisions about
policies that we could possibly change.

We do not mention places to get software if they lead people to
nonfree software.  See the GNU Coding Standards, node References.  Our
stance about MELPA is determined directly by this principle.  Unless
MELPA's policies change, our stance about it cannot change.  We can
do no other.

  >   Remember, this is a
  > survey to find out how Emacs users use their editor, not about how much
  > they adhere to FSF ideology.

Nobody would disagree with that point, but that abstract question is
not where the disagreement is.

We need to inform people that there is a grave moral flaw in MELPA,
and we can't do that if we ask questions about it just the same as
we do about other repositories.

What we might do is ask

  Which of these exclusively libre Lisp package archives do you use

with a list of those, then

  Do you use any Lisp package archives not in that list?

and people could answer MELPA if they wish.


-- 
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)