An elegy for GNU and RMS
&gt; Emacs is not an independent project, and it isn&#x27;t governed by its contributors. I&#x27;m the head of the GNU Project, and that includes Emacs.<p>Honestly adore this attitude and wish more devs had the self-assuredness to run their projects this way. Assured not only in the their vision but in their <i>ability to have a vision</i>.<p>When that’s missing it becomes really easy to write software that creates tedium instead of freeing us from it. There’s even a word for when a project’s vision is to avoid vision. The one word in a readme that fills me with more dread than any other — “unopinionated”.<p>Translation: “Here, <i>you</i> make all the decisions, because the only way I know to avoid having any Wrong Opinions at this scale is to have none”. If the concept of “unopinionated software” had a favorite color it would be “What’s yours?”