>> More importantly: what do you want to do about `request`?
>>
> About this, I really suggest ELPA can include it.
I'm glad we agree. AFAICT the main contributor is Takafumi Arakaki who
hasn't signed the copyright paperwork. Any chance you could contact him
and ask him to sign that paperwork?
AFAICT `request` is a fairly popular library so it would be very nice to
have it in GNU ELPA.
Stefan