Re: guix emacs package MELPA/ELPA

Re: guix emacs package MELPA/ELPA

[Akib Azmain Turja]

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Arvid Krein <arvidkrein@zedat.fu-berlin.de> writes:

> Hello guix-devel,
>
> this is my first time writing to this list so I hope I am at the right
> place.
> I noticed that the guix package for emacs was moved from being
> developed at Github/Gitlab to Savannah. There is the guix package

Thanks for letting me know, I thought guix.el was just dead.

> 'emacs-guix'. Some people (including me) would rather use the MELPA or
> ELPA package repositories for emacs. I noticed that the guix.el
> package in MELPA is still refering to the old locations on
> github/gitlab which are unmaintained and do not work.
> I will try to get the location fixed in MELPA. But since the package
> has moved closer to the guix project (if I understood it right) would
> it maybe make more sense to host it on ELPA (since it is the GNU
> repository)? I do not really know anything about emacs packaging which
> is why I am asking.
>
> Greetings
>
> Arvid
>

GNU ELPA (elpa.gnu.org) is not the correct place for guix.el.  GNU ELPA
is for the packages that are part of GNU Emacs but not distributed with
Emacs; therefore FSF holds the copyright of those packages.

NonGNU ELPA is the correct place, it is for all types of free software
Emacs packages that are not part of GNU Emacs.

I'm CC'ing emacs-devel list, with hopes that someone will give a better
explanation, or correct me.

-- 
Akib Azmain Turja, GPG key: 70018CE5819F17A3BBA666AFE74F0EFA922AE7F5
Fediverse: akib@hostux.social
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Re: guix emacs package MELPA/ELPA

[Stefan Kangas]

Akib Azmain Turja <akib@disroot.org> writes:

> GNU ELPA (elpa.gnu.org) is not the correct place for guix.el.  GNU ELPA
> is for the packages that are part of GNU Emacs but not distributed with
> Emacs; therefore FSF holds the copyright of those packages.
>
> NonGNU ELPA is the correct place, it is for all types of free software
> Emacs packages that are not part of GNU Emacs.

Thinking of this in terms of "being part of Emacs" or not doesn't
necessarily help make things clearer, in my opinion.

The main difference between GNU ELPA and NonGNU ELPA is that the former
requires all copyright to be assigned to the Free Software Foundation,
whereas the latter does not.  So if the copyright of guix.el is
assigned, it could be added to GNU ELPA.  Otherwise, it would have to go
to NonGNU ELPA.

There are also ethical requirements for both archives, of course.  These
are mainly that packages must be free software, and not recommend using
non-free software.

Re: guix emacs package MELPA/ELPA

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2022 08:57:07 -0800
> Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> The main difference between GNU ELPA and NonGNU ELPA is that the former
> requires all copyright to be assigned to the Free Software Foundation,
> whereas the latter does not.

Not only that: the packages on GNU ELPA are generally expected to conform
more closely to Emacs coding conventions, and are held to higher standards
than those on NonGNU ELPA.

Re: guix emacs package MELPA/ELPA

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

The packages in GNU ELPA really are part of GNU Emacs.  We get
copyright assignments for them, and we work on them just as if they
were in the Emacs core.  Indeed, we can move them between GNU ELPA and
the core when that is useful.

The packages in NonGNU ELPA are really not part of GNU Emacs, and you
can see that in every aspect of how we treat them.  We do not maintain
them; we do not host their development; we don't deal with their
copyrights.  They can't go into Emacs core.

All we do with them is inform users about the possibility of using
them.

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