Re: Some hard numbers on licenses used by elisp packages

[Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com>]

> On Jul 16, 2017, at 10:55, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
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> 
> 500 (roughly) packages is a lot of packages, and checking them by hand
> would be a fair amount of work.  The only way to check so many packages
> efficiently is with tools.
> 
> But we don't need to study 500 packages to understand the _general
> causes_ for which packages show up as "unlicensed".
> 
> I propose that people pick 10 of these packages, perhaps randomly, and
> study each of the 10 by hand.  Does it have any license that the
> existing tools did not notice?  If so, is there a way to fix them to
> notice that license?  Was it a typo in the licence notice?
> 
> Or was that package simply published with no license?
> 
> 10 packages is a much smaller task.  Small enough, I think, that there
> is no need to worry about making any special tools.  It's enough to
> look at the source files.
> 
> Once we understand what KINDS of problems appear among these
> "unlicensed" packages, I expect it will be clear what questions to
> pose for the other 500 or so "unlicensed" packages, and easy enough to
> write automatic tools to characterize almost all of them.
> 
> Wha do you think of this approach?

That's an easy and useful task that can be handled by beginning contributors. Could experienced people provide the list of packages 500+ that we need to pick 10 from ?

Jean-Christophe