Re: Concrete suggestions to improve Org mode third-party integration :: an afterthought following Karl Voit's Orgdown proposal

[Ihor Radchenko]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> - The suggested org mode in a browser example is unlikely to be
>   acceptable to the FSF (or RMS). The FSF is very much against cloud
>   based computing services or any web service which uses non-free
>   Javascript (which is most of them and one of the many reasons Github
>   is discouraged by the FSF).

You are not right. I am well aware about the freedom of computation and
proposed organise because it is not actually cloud-based. Organise is a
frontend. It is licensed under AGPL. AGPL is recommended by FSF for
network software.

> A number of the ideas proposed are good ideas for org mode generally -
> for example, a repository of reference documents which could be used for
> testing purposes would be extremely useful for org-mode development and
> testing. Likewise, any effort to clarify the syntax and remove any
> ambiguities is beneficial for org mode itself. However, the emphasis and
> priority needs to remain focused on org mode as a mode for Emacs. The
> use of org mode by other external programs is really outside (but
> related) to the project.

May you clarify which one of the proposed changes has insufficient
emphasis on org mode for Emacs? If you have concrete ideas for
improvement, feel free to propose them.

> As a consequence and to eliminate/remove potential conflicts with FSF
> philosophy and goals, it may be worth considering spinning off a
> separate project. which happens to use the same markup syntax, but is
> not a GNU project (though it would be good to still be GPL'd). 

I think that's what Karl proposed? I created this thread with specific
purpose to adapt his ideas to Org mode as a free software under FSF.

> If you want ot get a feel for the sort of issues which could come up
> when trying to develop/support 3rd party tools, have a look at the
> recent thread on creating an LSP server for emacs-lisp. While I
> personally disagree with most of the fears raised by some contributors
> to that thread and disagree with RMS's view that such a server would not
> be in the best interests of Emacs, the thread does give you a sample of
> the sort of issues which could come up with efforts to support or
> encourage 3rd party libraries for org markup, much of which could be
> avoided if the work is clearly not part of, related to or supported by
> the main org-mode project. 

I have looked through that thread. I do not think that it applies.
Implementing LSP server for Elisp will give little benefit for Emacs while
giving a "free" and large benefit to non-free software at the same time.

Our situation is different. What I propose in a nutshell is: (1) Improve
our technical documentation; (2) Improve our test coverage; (3) Attract
more users to Org mode. Everything gives benefits to Org. In addition to
better integration.

Best,
Ihor