GNU Emacs Developement Inefficiency (commentary)

[Emmy Noether]

On Jul 16, 1:41 am, Uday S Reddy <uDOTsDOTre... at cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 7/16/2010 12:23 AM, Xah Lee wrote:
>
>
>
> > It got closed right away i suppose partly has to do with my
> > unforgiving nature of criticizing and run-in with some GNU emacs
> > developers in gnu.emacs.help and comp.emacs in the past 5 or so years.
>
> I think "criticizing" is an understatement for what you do.  Insulting and
> abusing might be closer to the truth.  You do write a lot of sense, but you
> also go off on rants occasionally writing stuff that has no place in civil
> conversation.  I am sure that the emacs developers try to be as professional as
> they can, but they would only be human if they undervalue your input because of
> your writing style.

Well, there is a lot of resistance from the emacs community in sharing
information. Richard Stallman is a true STALLER of progress. He has
held the whole process hostage by not sharing information. He has
RENEGED on his promise to make it truly open by suppressing
documentation of his softwares.

> > Re-writing the whole doc in a modern perspective might take me one
> > month full time. (e.g. 160 hours) But if it were to be done in a
> > public way, or submit to him, the time it takes to communicate, email,
> > write justifications, create diffs, etc, can easily take half a year
> > full time (960 hours). In the end, i'm not even sure half of the text
> > in the new doc would be accepted.
>
> If you can rewrite it in a month's time, then what are you waiting for?  You
> can write it and publish it on your own, calling it a "Modernized Emacs
> Manual".  If people find it valuable and it is accurate, then I am sure Gnu
> will distribute it.

The one who has the key can open the lock in a jiffy.

The one who does not have the key will take lots of labor to do it esp
if he has never opened the lock before.

All Richard Stallman has to do is to hand draw the data-structures and
architecture of the various programs. Give references to the places
where he got the ideas.

He does not even have to type. He can write with pencil and scan and
thats all. This way he can make marvelously elaborate diagrams. He can
even make audios or videos.

He has plenty of time to make POLITICAL videos. He has plenty of time
to to write that elaborate manual on LISP MACHINE PROPOSAL on the
internet.

Its less about bugs and more about releasing the details and tricks of
the softwares he has written.

Yes, he can do in one month because he has the key.

Will he do it only after he is anointed as a king in the temple of
Solomon ?

> > The GNU Emacs's bug database sucks majorly. I have problem finding all
> > bugs posted by me. (it's using Debbugs.) Hard to find any bug by its
> > search feature. They did not have a bug database, only in around 2008.
> > Most commercial software have a bug database system in 1990s, and most
> > large open source projects have one by early 2000s. (I wrote a bug
> > tracker in 1998, 4k lines of Perl (with CGI, MySQL), in about 2 weeks,
> > for a startup brainpower.com.)
>
> I go to gmane.emacs.bugs and view it in Thunderbird.  I have no problem finding
> my bug reports or any one else's.

The FSF people have intentionally erected lots of barriers for others.
FSF plays a crooked game and this will be discussed in detail.

In this video, Stall man makes 4 promises to public but stalls on 2nd
of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BfCJq_zIdk&feature=fvsr

1/ Freedom to Run to the Program
2/ Freedom to study the source code, you control it  <------ Software
is a puzzle and it must be explained to be able to do that, its like a
lock
3/ Freedom to help your neightbors, share with them
4/ Freedom to contribute to your community

Software is a puzzle and it must be explained to be able to do that,
its like a lock

"to MAKE SURE you get the four freedoms"

He is WRONG !!! He has not made sure. He has not taken the first
steps.

Software architecture must be documented. A model minimal release must
be given. If it takes too long to document the program by writing in
Latex, then he can write by hand or make an video with camera on the
paper and he can talk.