Re: non-gnu elpa issue tracking

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2020 at 5:58 AM
> From: "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
> To: "Tim Cross" <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, thibaut.verron@gmail.com, stefankangas@gmail.com, 
> bugs@gnu.support, boruch_baum@gmx.com
> Subject: Re: non-gnu elpa issue tracking
>
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ 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.

Quite the right approach.

> 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.

In some way, the license needs to be compatible, or has the ability to
re-license for compatibility with Emacs.

>   > 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.

That's right.

> 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.

Agreed

> --
> 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)
>
>
>
>