mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Massimiliano Gubinelli <address@hidden>]

It seems to me you misunderstand the concept of “free software”, please give a look at

What is Free Software? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation gnu.org

in case. If we do not support in any way free software, then closed source software will always have a lead and we all loose. Free does not mean zero cost, it means that when you obtain it you can do whatever you like with it. 

Joris could have just asked for some donation for the project, instead he choose to publish some additional useful content about TeXmacs, content which is not free, but which provide some additional support to users. It is like the GNU foundation which offers merchandise, like t-shirt which allow them to support their activity:

FSF Shop shop.fsf.org

for example the Emacs manual costs $50.  There is nothing wrong with it, and certainly is a part of the overall project of developing and maintaining a free software within an health community of users. 

Note that the PDF is not free, you can freely download it but you should seriously consider to make a donation for it if it is of some use to you. It is quite easy from this page:

The Jolly Writer - Download page scypress.com

But the manual is not free in the sense that you cannot resell it :)

Best

Max

 

On 13 Apr 2023, at 17:40, Maxime Devos <address@hidden> wrote:

Op 13-04-2023 om 16:54 schreef Massimiliano Gubinelli:

Well, the manual is free because Joris wrote it and choose to make it free, while Jolly Writer is now accessible via PDF

I thought it was a paid book, but apparently a PDF exists _and is zero-cost_ (I thought you were referring to some e-book to pay for first ...): <https://www.scypress.com/The-Jolly-Writer.pdf>

> So I do not see why you see a problem with one but not the other.

The "Jolly Writer" is not part of TeXmacs -- TeXmacs is GNU software, GNU requires free (*) documentation, the "Jolly Writer" isn't free, ergo the "Jolly Writer" can't be part of TeXmacs (under the assumption that GNU requirements are followed).

Then, given a choice between an external non-free manual (the Jolly Writer) and the built-in manual, the builtin-manual seems a more reasonable choice to me, especially if the external is not freely accessible (^).

(*) as in, free, not zero cost
(^) which has just been disproved, but I didn't know it back then.

> Writing all this documentation for TeXmacs required anyway a lot of time.

If writing documentation takes lots of time, then surely writing documentation _twice_ takes longer.  Looking at the Jolly Writer, it appears to cover many parts of TeXmacs, so it appears to me that the user manual of TeXmacs could just be "The Jolly Writer, + a bunch of additional chapters".

(This would not prevent selling copies -- the license of the user manual (GFDL IIRC) allows selling copies.)

Given that this doesn't appear to have been done, it seems an illogical situation to me, so I'll stick with the builtin manual instead of the sort-of-but-not-really-external ‘Why isn't this just part of the user manual??? What's oging on???’ book.

Given that it appears that the writing of this additional manual is time-wasting (there is already another manual!!), I think I _shouldn't_ buy "The Jolly Writer" to _not_ encourage such time wasting.  (Someone may waste some time if they want to, but not with my money.)

Greetings,
MaximE.
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