Alternatively, if you join a Stallman-led Free Software project and hope he'll accept your ideas for making life easier for proprietary vendors, you're gonna have a bad time. I mean, the GNU Emacs FAQ for MS Windows (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32...) says:
> It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows?
> We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems.
RMS has been exceedingly clear about his views for decades. At this point it's hard to be surprised that he’ll make a pro-Free Software decision every time, without fail. That doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions, of course! But to be shocked or disappointed by them is a sign of not understanding his platform.
But they're only bad/counterproductive when assessed against their own goals. They're a lot more reasonable if you assess them against Stallman's, where you could say "yeah, these actions kept GCC from becoming a handy tool for proprietary interests who don't want to share their work back with us".
On the subject of software freedom, I hate how accurately prophetic he is.
RMS: Here’s how they'll get ya!
Me: Nice, but that'd never happen.
Vendor: Here’s how we got ya!
Me: Dammit.
Seriously, he must have a working crystal ball.
Now, my agreement with him starts and ends on that subject. He says plenty of other things I wholly disagree with. But his warnings about proprietary software lock-in? Every. Single. Time.
I mean, I think he is right. If everyone stopped supporting Windows, it would have long died out in favor of easy-to-install Linux distributions... probably.
As gray dog around the prairie, had Microsoft actually been serious with POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000, instead of some marketing material and low level effort, GNU/Linux adoption would never taken off, at least not at a level that would have mattered.
With OS X on one side, and POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000 side, everyone would be doing their UNIX like workflows without thinking once to try out GNU/Linux.
At my university we only cared about Linux on its early days, Slackware 2.0 days, because naturally we couldn't have DG/UX at home, and that POSIX support was really unusable beyond toy examples.
> It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows?
> We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems.
RMS has been exceedingly clear about his views for decades. At this point it's hard to be surprised that he’ll make a pro-Free Software decision every time, without fail. That doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions, of course! But to be shocked or disappointed by them is a sign of not understanding his platform.