Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-01-07 23:38]:
> > Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 23:31:47 +0300
> > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
> >   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> > 
> > > Where do you see the "in order to increase its popularity" part?  That
> > > would mean to say something about the non-free packages that would
> > > represent them as beneficial or better than others or worthy of
> > > installing and using.  I see none of that.
> > 
> > I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it cannot do
> > that easily technically. So it does not make neither free software nor
> > proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the problem.
> 
> How is it a problem? where's the promotion, please?

A WWW index of hyperlinks is promotion of hyperlinks. Simple placement
of a hyperlink on anybody's website is promotion of the other
website. That is how Internet works. Software is promoted on
repology.org in my opinion, and in yours maybe not. I was thinking it
is obvious. Just as it is promoted on Trisquel, just as it is promoted
in Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre or Gentoo, so software is promoted on
repology.org

When Yahoo had an index of websites, just to enter into the index
people had to pay money for review and when it would be successful,
those websites would receive larger number of website visitors,
buyers, users.

In the same sense by showing information like hyperlinks to free
software, or without hyperlinks just description of software, one is
promoting that software. Making a reference from repology.el would be
lack of our supervision on what the GNU project wish to reference to
GNU Emacs users.

Since 2021, GNU project did not provide references to proprietary
software. It did not provide Emacs package to help free software users
to find more proprietary software. I would be surprised if GNU project
begins doing that from 2021, as if we continue disintegrating the
basic principles of GNU project, by 2031 we may expect something
worse, maybe total disappearance of GNU project in its sense of free
software teaching center.

> > > GNU ELPA is not the issue here.  The issue here is total rejection of
> > > software that dares to provide information about software packages
> > > which might not be Free Software.  I explained why finding such
> > > information is important to me in my role as a GNU maintainer.
> > 
> > I am only talking about GNU ELPA and if repology.org should be in GNU
> > ELPA as that way we would influence millions of people by giving them
> > references to non-free software. It would speak badly of GNU project.
> > 
> > But that you use the package yourself, that is freedom of choice.
> 
> But that's immoral, isn't it?

Myself, I look at words like moral as agreements with society and do
not judge your actions to be moral or immoral, it is personal
choice. I find nothing wrong in you using it. I make some distinction
so the word "ethics" is personal for me, and "moral" is social
norm. And I do not find it neither moral nor immoral for you or
anybody else, as I do not judge people.

Personally, I am judging what GNU ELPA as free software project and
part of GNU Emacs should show to free software users, should it
provide a search engine within GNU Emacs, easily accessible, where
users can easily find proprietary software? Then I say personally to
that question NO. That is all. To me, it is not related to morality,
it is related to what GNU project is about, teaching people about free
software.

Who uses what beyond GNU project or beyond GNU ELPA is not issue, I am
not telling people not to use anything. But I may disadvise them and
tell them why.

> If some other maintainer asks me how to do this job, I cannot tell
> him or her about repology.org, can I?  If I do, Jean Louis will
> pounce on me and say that it's against GNU policies, right?

Ah come on, I am last to tell so. :-) And I never even talked about
it. Obviously we repeated multiple times "repology.org" and we speak
about it. I do not tell other people what to speak or how to express
themselves.

But if repology.org would be a hyperlink on GNU.org website then I may
object to it, but then again, accept the final resolution by
maintainers.

Jean