Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[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. ]]]

  >    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
  >    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
  >    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.

  >    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?

  > In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

I think that oversimplifies the situation.

You can use GNU software to do anything.  You can use IceCat to read
about nonfree programs on the web, look at their repos on GitHub, look
at info about them in repology.org -- anything at all.  You can use GCC
to compile them, too.

Researching nonfree software is usually a bad thing to do, because
people generally do it so as to use or develop nonfree software.  On
the other hand, if it is to help replace those nonfree programs, that
is a good thing.

GNU programs don't try to judge the morality of whatever you are
doing.  They do what you command.

The issue about repology.org is not about that.  It is whether we
should tell the public about its existence, for instance by including
in Emacs a program specifically aimed at that site.



-- 
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)