>What I've told you is that advantages only for Windows users are not
>important advantages for the GNU Project. Our goal is to replace
>Windows, not to enhance it, and we must not allow ourselves to be
>distracted from this goal for the convenience of Windows users.
Yes, I agree to that, but maybe that does not mean that "advantages only
for Windows users" are unimportant and does not contribute to GNU? For
example I have found myself spending a lot of time trying to overcome
different problems I meet in Emacs as a Windows users. There might be
many possible contributors on Windows that does the same. Would it not
be an advantage for GNU if we could spend more of our power actually
contributing to the overall project?
This is true when the Windows users are making contributions to Emacs
that make Emacs better as a part of the GNU system. In other words,
contributions that really matter, contributions that are not
Windows-only.
This does not alter the point that Windows-only improvements are not
important for the GNU Project. Correcting Windows-only bugs or
misfeatures is welcome, just not as important as making Emacs better
on the GNU system. Windows-only features are not acceptable.
To gain many developers at the cost of forgetting our goal would be
a grave error.
There are plenty of things that I believe could benefit from
studying Windows solutions. Do you not think that this could speed up
the development? Is not this a viable strategy?
If you mean, looking at Windows for ideas that we would apply in a
system-independent way, and that could make Emacs better on all
platforms, that is a useful thing to do. It is useful precisely
because any features that result would not be Windows-only.
However, in order to be desirable, these features would have to
provide advantages on the GNU system, not just on Windows.
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