Re: freedomization task list [was: Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL]

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    for instance, I run Debian, and the version of EMACS that Debian comes
    with, when run under X, spawns off an X-ized version of EMACS, rather than
    merely running the text-only (console?) version in the xterm.

This is a minor thing, easy to change.  If we want the pico-emulator
to behave differently, we can easily make it so.

Whether Emacs is a good basis for replacing Pico is a matter that
should be decided based on things that are not easy to change.

    More importantly, EMACS is huge. Pico is tiny-- 156K versus 1.81M
    on my system, just binaries-wise 

2 meg nowadays is not a big deal.  I suspect that most Pico users will
not notice the size of the editor; they do notice the look and feel of
it.

    Pico is tiny, albeit tricky to
    compile-- the clone would be tiniER,

Optimizing a program for smallness tends to be a lot of extra work.
It is not worth while unless there is some special crucial need for
it, which here there isnot.

I don't know whether it is better to base the Pico replacement on
Emacs, or something else, or start from scratch.  But whichever way it
is done, I think people should focus on getting it working properly
with as little time as possible, to move on to another project--not on
optimizing it for size.