Subject: Re: bug#47677: [PATCH] condition-case success continuation

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 15:44:37 +0300

> From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked],
> 	[email-masked], [email-masked]
> Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:40:01 -0400
> 
>   > FTR: I agree with you.  However, sadly this seems to be a minority
>   > opinion in the current Emacs development: features are added to Emacs
>   > Lisp left, right and center without any serious consideration of the
>   > of the costs and benefits balance.  The pressure to add features to
>   > Emacs Lisp is enormous.
> 
> The reason GNU packages have maintainers is so that they can make
> the design decisions.  We can stand against pressure.

IME, that only works up to a point.  When pressure becomes high enough
and from many contributors, standing fast against it has significant
negative effects: some people become frustrated and we risk losing
them, the general atmosphere becomes unpleasant, and if nothing else,
a lot of the maintainers' time is wasted on the dispute.  And this is
assuming all the maintainers agree, which is not always the case.

The only practical way to prevent such developments IME is to convince
people that they are wrong.  And that is not easy when the subject is
not exactly the maintainer's domain of expertise.