Re: Adding advisory notification for non-ELPA package.el downloads

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

On Sun, Jul 09, 2017 at 08:50:53AM +1000, Tim Cross wrote:
> Totally agree. If we want people to 'do the
> right thing', we have to make it as easy as
> possible. If things are as bad as Clement
> indicates, nagging users will have little impact
> and what impact it does have will likely be
> negative.
> 
> WRT Richard's suggestion about a weekly notice
> when editing elisp files - not sure if it should
> be all elisp files or whether it should be
> restricted to files like *-pkg.el that are part
> of package.el packages? I do a fair amount of
> elisp which does not use package.el, so notices
> about ELPA are just annoying. Maybe we could
> modify package.el to make it mandatory for
> packages to include a file/statement which
> maintainers must include which requires them to
> acknowledge the benefits of free software and
> the disadvantages of non-ELPA repositories.

What developers of GNU Emacs could do is to have
yet another HELP menu item, "How to contribute",
where the full instructions and updated file may
be displayed in the manner of Emacs News or "How
to display bugs".

The menu "How to contribute" should be there all
the time.

I do not think that users editing *.el files shall
be bothered.

But they can be bothered on the Splash screen
which could link to "How to contribute" file and
on other screns, there could be link to "How to
contribute".

Same links could explain the problem with
copyrights and proper assignments.

And the same section could be included in Emacs
Lisp and Emacs manuals.

That way larger number of people would understand
that they can directly contribute and they would
have not just a short notice, but full
explanation.

Jean Louis