Re: Clojure mode

[Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net>]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> [2023-08-30; 22:07 -04]:
> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > What I had in mind was something akin to autoload that, rather than
>   > providing _any_ clojure mode (in this specific example), instead provides
>   > the user with a buffer conveying that Clojure support in emacs is
>   > available, but is not currently bundled directly, and offers the user a
>   > short description of each of the two packages clojure-mode and
>   > clojure-ts-mode, along with buttons to install and activate each package.
>
> That would be more convenient for people editing Clojure programs.
> But it has a downside: it would tend to fuzz the distinction between
> GNU Emacs and NonGNU ELPA.
>
> That distinction is important, and it is important for users
> to know about it.
>
> This is why loading anything whatsoever from NonGNU ELPA has to be an
> explicit request from the user.  Nothing should ever enable it
> implicitly.
>
> Perhaps we can find a way to modify this suggestion to avoid that
> downside.  The crucial thing is not to aim to make it smooth or
> automatic, but on the contrary to impress on the user that this
> is crossing a gulf.

why is this crossing a gulf?

The packages in NonGnu ELPA are selected by the Emacs
developers, and according to
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/nongnu.git/plain/README.org,
there "* Guidance for accepting packages", a package in
NonGnu ELPA is GPL-3+ (for documentation and education
other licenses are prescribed), does not refer users to
any nonfree software or nonfree documentation, in
general does not run code that it has fetched over the
internet, delivers its full functionality and
convenience on a completely free platform based on the
GNU operating system, only provides features on
non-free systems which are already provides on free
ones, may communicate with a class of remote services
only if this is for communication or to access
published material, may not use remote services to do
the user's own computational processing, may not
advertise anything commercial with material in the
NonGNU ELPA package or this repository with the
exception of paid service for said package; the Emacs
developers even may change/maintain it.

So the only difference to Gnu ELPA is the copyright
assignment.  Why does that amount to crossing a gulf
for the user?