Show the license of package in ELPA website.

Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[Zhu Zihao]

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I found that the Non-GNU ELPA didn't show the license of the package on
it.

example: https://elpa.nongnu.org/nongnu/zig-mode.html

GNU ELPA is a part of Emacs, so the packages on it should be GPL3+, but
the package on Non-GNU ELPA should use different license like MIT Expat,
GPL2, LGPL2.1 etc. (correct me if I'm wrong). Can we add a line to show
the license of these packages on website?

BTW, the website says it licensed under CC BY-ND, which is not a free
license IMO violates the spirit of GNU. Is there any reason prevent us
using CC BY-SA or GNU FDL?
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Zihao

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Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[Stefan Monnier]

Zhu Zihao [2022-05-04 14:18:29] wrote:
> I found that the Non-GNU ELPA didn't show the license of the package on it.
>
> example: https://elpa.nongnu.org/nongnu/zig-mode.html
>
> GNU ELPA is a part of Emacs, so the packages on it should be GPL3+, but
> the package on Non-GNU ELPA should use different license like MIT Expat,
> GPL2, LGPL2.1 etc. (correct me if I'm wrong). Can we add a line to show
> the license of these packages on website?

The packages on NonGNU ELPA may use another license but only if it's
compatible with the GPLv3+.  IOW that should be distributable under the
GPLv3+ license, and AFAIK it's the only thing users need to know.

If they really want to know that the code is using a more permissive
license, I think it's OK to leave it up to them to do the work to find
out.  Since most ELisp code will necessarily have to be linked with the
rest of Emacs to be useful, there are very few opportunities for users
to take advantage of a more permissive license anyway.

> BTW, the website says it licensed under CC BY-ND, which is not a free
> license IMO violates the spirit of GNU.  Is there any reason prevent us
> using CC BY-SA or GNU FDL?

I'll let someone more knowledgeable about these issues tackle this part
of your inquiry.  I personally don't have an opinion.  If/when
a decision to change it is made, I'd be happy to help implement it.


        Stefan

Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[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 on NonGNU ELPA may use another license but only if it's
  > compatible with the GPLv3+.  IOW that should be distributable under the
  > GPLv3+ license, and AFAIK it's the only thing users need to know.

I agree.

-- 
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)

Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[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. ]]]

  > BTW, the website says it licensed under CC BY-ND, which is not a free
  > license IMO violates the spirit of GNU. Is there any reason prevent us
  > using CC BY-SA or GNU FDL?

Which specific pages on which web site are we talking about?  I am
guessing that it is elpa.nongnu.org, but please tell me if it is some
other.

I've noticed that people have a tendency to simplify the Free Software
Movement rules and principles as far as they can.  We do not say that
"all written works must be free."

What we do say is that all software that you distribute to others must
come with freedom for them.

That position is based on reasons, and the reasons apply to some other
sorts of works as well.  For instance, documentation -- of software or
anything else -- must be free.  Ultimately, all works meant to be
_used_ in a practical way most be free.

But statements of facts witnessed, views, positions, and opinions
don't have to be free.  Those reasons don't apply to them, and
CC-BY-ND is fine for them.  (Likewise for art.)

I know that some of elpa.nongnu.org falls into that category.
Maybe all of it does.

If there are substantial parts that are works made for functional use,
we should put free licenses on those parts.

https://gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-vs-community.html explains the
overall idea behind this.

-- 
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)

Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[Zhu Zihao]

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NonGNU ELPA says "This website is licensed under the CC BY-ND 4.0
International License. " And IMO the web frontend code like JavaScript
and CSS should be free, so people who host their own ELPA and re-use the
web frontend code of NonGNU ELPA to list packages on their website.

So the term "website" used by NonGNU ELPA really made me confused.
It's too general.

> But statements of facts witnessed, views, positions, and opinions
> don't have to be free.  Those reasons don't apply to them, and
> CC-BY-ND is fine for them.  (Likewise for art.)

IIUC the style and design(CSS & JS) of the website is not a part of you
mentioned here. Am I right?
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Zihao

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Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[Zhu Zihao]

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Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> The packages on NonGNU ELPA may use another license but only if it's
> compatible with the GPLv3+.  IOW that should be distributable under the
> GPLv3+ license, and AFAIK it's the only thing users need to know.
>
> If they really want to know that the code is using a more permissive
> license, I think it's OK to leave it up to them to do the work to find
> out.  Since most ELisp code will necessarily have to be linked with the
> rest of Emacs to be useful, there are very few opportunities for users
> to take advantage of a more permissive license anyway.

I'm working on GNU Guix packaging. When I package the Elisp package on
NonGNU ELPA, it's better to respect the origin license of the package
rather than marking them all GPLv3.Providing the license of package can
help simplify the work of distribution maintainers.

For Guix, we have a package importer which import package from other
package hosting sites like ELPA automatically. And now the package
importer for ELPA cannot grab the license of package because NonGNU ELPA
doesn't provide them.
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Zihao

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Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[Stefan Monnier]

Zhu Zihao [2022-05-07 13:01:33] wrote:
> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>> The packages on NonGNU ELPA may use another license but only if it's
>> compatible with the GPLv3+.  IOW that should be distributable under the
>> GPLv3+ license, and AFAIK it's the only thing users need to know.
>>
>> If they really want to know that the code is using a more permissive
>> license, I think it's OK to leave it up to them to do the work to find
>> out.  Since most ELisp code will necessarily have to be linked with the
>> rest of Emacs to be useful, there are very few opportunities for users
>> to take advantage of a more permissive license anyway.
>
> I'm working on GNU Guix packaging. When I package the Elisp package on
> NonGNU ELPA, it's better to respect the origin license of the package
> rather than marking them all GPLv3.  Providing the license of package can
> help simplify the work of distribution maintainers.
>
> For Guix, we have a package importer which import package from other
> package hosting sites like ELPA automatically. And now the package
> importer for ELPA cannot grab the license of package because NonGNU ELPA
> doesn't provide them.

If you take them from NonGNU ELPA, you *can* label them as GPLv3+.
It's simple and technically should be correct, tho admittedly not optimal.

You can also opt to try and be more faithful to the upstream license,
but I suspect in that case you'll find that some of those packages don't
use the same license for all their files so you can't always just stick
a single license over the whole package.

Also, to be clear: I'm not opposing the addition of license information
in the NonGNU ELPA site.  It's just that currently there's no support to
provide that info anywhere and I'm not interested in doing the work
needed to add support for it (especially since I consider licensing
ELisp code under something else than GPLv3+ to be ... misleading).

But I wouldn't mind incorporating someone else's patches to add such
support :-)


        Stefan

Re: Show the license of package in ELPA website.

[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. ]]]

  > > But statements of facts witnessed, views, positions, and opinions
  > > don't have to be free.  Those reasons don't apply to them, and
  > > CC-BY-ND is fine for them.  (Likewise for art.)

  > IIUC the style and design(CSS & JS) of the website is not a part of you
  > mentioned here.

I am not sure what that sentence means.  But I think I understand the question.

CSS is a kind of style markup for the text or other contents.  We
treat it as part of the contents.  It should have a license like the
page contents, or else a license compatible with the page contents.

As for Javascript, that is software code.  We reject any nonfree software.
So all Javascript code in a page must be free.

And really you should avoid using Javascript code for anything substantial.


-- 
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)