Re: non-gnu elpa issue tracking

[Richard Stallman]

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[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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  > The non-GNU ELPA is supposed to be a repository for packages which are GPL
  > compliant and it is a reasonable expectation that those who make their
  > packages GPL compliant do so because they support the philosophical goals
  > of the FSF.

I wish this were true, but it is not.  Our influence is limited.  (It
would get stronger if more people showed support for our goals in
a visible way.)

There are some things we must refuse to do, because doing them would
put us in a moral contradiction.  "Please do X", where doing X requires
running a nonfree program, is one thing we must not say.  And we must
not agree to do X ourselves.

However, to go beyond that can be strategically unwise.  To reject
packages simply because the developers release them on GitHub would be
self-defeating.  To try to pressure those users to move off GitHub
when we do not _need_ that would create avoidable friction.

Of course, we won't lead users to download those packages from GitHub.
We will lead users to download them from NonGNU ELPA.


By the way, I think the term "GPL-compliant" has a misunderstanding in
it.  Strictly speaking, the time when you must comply with the GPL (or
whichever license L) is when you reuse material released under that
license.  Thus, a software distribution is GPL-compliant if the
GPL-covered materials in it are used in accord with the GPL.  If it is
NOT GPL-compliant, that means it is a GPL violation.

That is the only valid use of the term "GPL-compliant", and I am
pretty sure it is not what you mean.  You are talking about something
done by the developers themselves, so it must be something else.

Perhaps you mean that the package carries a license compatible with
our license (GPL version 3-or-later).  Is that right?  That is indeed
something we must insist on.  But it does not mean we must insist that
the developers follow all the best practices we recommend, or implore
people to follow.


  > As I understand it, non-GNU ELPA is not supposed to be
  > a repository for all other packages where the author doe snot want to
  > assign copyright to the FSF. It is supposed to be for all other GPL
  > compliant packages where the author does not want to assign copyright to
  > the FSF.

Actually it is not intended as a repository at all.  It is a place for
distributing packages, not for developing them.  It is more similar
to MELPA, but curated.

NonGNU ELPA is our plan for distributing to users any and all packages
which we would like to distribute, and for which there is no big
obstacle to our doing so.

We would like to minimize what we need to ask the developers of those
packages to do for us and with us -- to ask only for what we _need_.

There are some things we need.  For instance, for moral reasons.

In principle, we CAN include (that is, redistribute) a package even if
it has no developers and is unmaintained.  We can say, "Here it is,
use it if you like it, we can't fix it."  But we can't tell users to
run a nonfree program to report bugs.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)