On Mon, 25 May 2020 at 14:36, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > Yes, but more specifically, what are the goals of ELPA (and the
> proposed
>   > ELPA without copyright assignment)? How are these to fit into the GNU
> Emacs
>   > eco-system?
>
> For us, the question is how they fit into the GNU Project and with its
> goals of freedom.  However, most of the specific questions you brought
> up are mostly practical.
>
> You posed one question has an answer that comes from a nontechnical basis:
>
>   > What about platforms - do packages need to support all
>   > the same platforms that Emacs supports?
>
> Each package, and each feature in each package, must support the GNU
> system, and in particular GNU/Linux.  Support for any other systems,
> including Windows and MacOS, is optional.
>
> That seems clear and makes sense.


> The rest of these questions you posed are purely practical.
>
>   >  What should go into ELPA, what should go into Emacs 'core'? How
>   > will these ELPA archives work with GNU Emacs releases? (e.g. Do the
>   > packages in these archives need to be compliant with new release, such
> as
>   > not using functions flagged obsolete, using updated versions of
>   > libs/modules in emacs core etc). Will an Emacs release be held up if
> there
>   > is a package in ELPA that does not work with new version? When can
> packages
>   > be updated and what backwards compatibility with older versions of
> Emacs
>   > should they support? ... for the archive where copyright is
>   > assigned to the FSF, who is responsible for maintenance and updates?
> When
>   > should packages be removed?
>
> and the Emacs developers (talking with this list)
> can work out good practical answers.
>

I think getting some initial answers/position on some of these could help.
For the type of packages we would like under a GNU managed archive, we need
to make that processes as easy and straight-forward as possible for both
the developers and those who perform critical maintenance processes.

I'm willing to try and assist here if possible. As a starting point, would
it be worthwhile starting some discussion threads in emacs-devel for each
question. I could then try and collate the responses into a single document
which could be a starting point. For example, I would probably start with
the question "What criteria should we use to determine if a module,
library, feature etc go into GNU Emacs core, or GNU ELPA?

What do others think? I could also have a thread asking for questions which
should be answered or things which should be documented with respect to
ELPA.

>
> --
> 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)
>
>
>

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross