> There are some hints at this in the GNU GPL (e.g. the sources have
> to be made available in their "preferred form"), but it goes much
> further, I think.
As a long time Emacs hacker I can only agree. satisfying the legal part
of the definition of "Free Software" is just the first step. If you
care about "Free as in Free speech" you also want to go through extra
trouble to help your users becomes hackers/developers.
Rather than focus on providing a slick&seamless experience you want to
focus on exposing your users to the program's source code. It comes
with its own downsides, of course.
E.g. Emacs has not been internationalized yet, and it's not completely
clear that it should: to internationalize it well, we'd need for example
to replace `M-x` with something that uses translated command names
rather than using the names used in the source code. That would be
helpful for non-English users, obviously, but that would also make it
harder for them to know what to write in their `.emacs` and to
understand Emacs' source code.
Stefan
