Re: rssh.el interactions with ange-ftp/efs

rms> Let folks use Appgen atop Linux -- Bad (exposes the rms> initiate to the wonders of applications not bundled with rms> the OS). rms> Four legs, good. Two legs, {bad,better}. -- Apologies to rms> George Owell, _Animal Farm_, Secker and Warburg, London, rms> 1945. rms> You seem to be arguing that anyone who sees a significant rms> distinction between two situations is on a par with a rms> dictator. I must say that is not an impressive argument. No. I intended merely to point to what seems to me the ridiculousness of the distinction and to note a parallel with the absurdities associated with doctrinaire dogma. The reference to Orwell (please excuse my original misspelling) was to the absurdities of dogma, which in this context I found amusing partly because of the juxtaposition with crypto and the obvious Orwellian _1984_ overtones. I intended no _ad hominem_ implications and I am very sorry if my scribbling lead you to such an interpretation. I am curious to know when the evil of running non-Free software atop free operating systems became part of the dogma. Was it perhaps after Linux with its hospitality to commercial applications started to attract attention? My prefatory remark, "What is wrong with this picture?", I had hopped might have provoked an explanation, or a pointer to an explanation, as to why this "back-sliding" is so evil as you indicated in the sequel. I find the doctrine of back-sliding difficult to understand. You said rms0> Right. Non-free operating systems and non-free add-ons are rms0> different issues. I want to encourage people who are using rms0> these non-free systems to add Emacs to them, but I don't want rms0> to encourage people using free systems such as GNU/Linux to rms0> backslide by installing ssh. Do you consider ssh an "add-on" to Linux? I can think of only a few people who consider any arbitrary application to be anything like an "add-on" to an operating system. Please explain what you mean. Later you said rms0> The readiness of people to add non-free programs to their rms0> free operating systems is the greatest problem we face, and rms0> explaining to people why this is bad is the greatest rms0> challenge. Perhaps, without getting into the taxonomy of operating systems and applications, you can provide an indication of why it is evil to run non-free programs atop free operating systems. Am I deluded to think that such a restriction would diminish the usefulness of free operating systems? If I am not so deluded, then what is the rationale for the restriction? rms> The rest of your arguments seem unfair also. I don't think rms> you have much chance of changing my mind this way--perhaps we rms> should simply go back to our respective work. So parody is unfair? An explanation might dispell the suggestion that a distinction that lets Free Software run atop proprietary OSes while not letting proprietary software run atop Free OSes is arbitrary and counter to the purpose of advancing the use and acceptance of Free Software. Was it unfair of me to question the dogma with which you cited to dismiss the suggestions at hand? Until responding to your mail of the 23rd my contributions to this thread were concerned with ange-ftp/efs, ssh, and ftpssh. I did not introduce the theological issues. Which of the five points on ange-ftp/efs with ssh do you find to be unfair? I can only interpret your dismissal of the questions about the FSF's support of "the right to use encryption software for private communication" to be an indication that the support is rather unsubstantial. Together with your dismissal of arguments pertaining specifically to using ange-ftp/efs with ssh, the FSF support for crypto rights seems to me indeed to be qualified by conditions. Is it fair to ask why you stand in the way of using ange-ftp/efs with ssh while we have mailcrypt supporting pgp2 and pgp5? (XEmacs, rightly IMO, does not include mailcrypt support for pgp5.) jam