Re: [PROPOSAL] Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > There are at least two options to do that, which were already mentioned 
  > upthread: (1) running "cargo tree -f '{l}'", which will display the 
  > license of each of the dependencies of the program, recursively (that 
  > option works out of the box),

It is useful that that feature exists, but it can't by itself correct
this problem.  The problem is that cargo will link programs with
nonfree libraries if they specify those libraries.

A free distro must not _by default_ offer any nonfree libraries for
linking.  If a user requests explicitly to link with specified nonfree
modules, the linker will do it, but a free distro never does that _on
its own initiative_ or suggests doing that.

-f would help a person building a Rust program find out whether it
would use any nonfree libraries, but (1) searching its output for all
the nonfree licenses could take some time and knowledge, and (2) not
all users will bother to check that.

                                  and (2) installing a plugin for cargo, named 
  > "cargo deny", which is itself free software, and with which you can check, 
  > again recursively, whether all the dependencies of a program are free 
  > (more precisely: have a license that is present in the list of licenses 
  > you have chosen to allow).

It may be able to do the job with this feature.  But we might want to
modify Cargo so that it blocks those licenses unconditionally.

Also, do Rust users make a habit of looking at the list of packages in
crates.io in other ways?  Either thru features of Cargo, or directly
thru various network protocols?

  > > I think we should move this to gnu-prog-disc.

It is simply that this issue is not really on topic for emacs-devel.
I feel we should save it for discussion of developing GNU Emacs.

  > I'm not subscribed to that mailing list, which AFAIK is an internal 
  > mailing list with restricted access.

It is meant for people participating in developing GNU.  Are you
working on developing GNU Emacs?  If so, that includes you.

Or I can cc you in the messages of this discussion and ask
others to do likewise.

-- 
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)