Re: enable MELPA & Marmalade by defaul [was: mykie.el]

[Nic Ferrier <nferrier@ferrier.me.uk>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
> A program with no license notice is not free software.
> (See http://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#NoLicense.)
> It is very bad practice for a repository to permits nonfree programs.
> Every repository should have a policy not to do that.
>
>     > It seems like a reasonable assumption that the overwhelming mass is
>     > licensed under the GPL, but I absolutely do think a user cannot tell
>     > whether an unlabelled package is free or not, at least I can't, not
>     > without consulting the author.
>
> If a source file doesn't have a license notice then it is nonfree.
>
> Maybe this policy results from a misunderstanding on the part
> of whoever runs Marmalade.  We should try explaining the facts
> about missing licenses and see if the maintainer of Marmalade
> will change the policy to stop allowing them.  Can someone put me
> in touch with the right people?

I run marmalade.

It is not a misunderstanding on my part.

You and I have spoken about it already on email.

My position is that I *do* want to add licence functionality to
marmalade.


The functionality will:

* allow package authors to choose what licence they distribute their
  code under (hopefully without any extra effort if the licence is
  stated in the code in the usual Emacs way) 

* allow users of marmalade to choose to use a repository which is
  exclusively:

** Free software only
** or GPL only
** or GPL + LGPL


But I am not ready to introduce those features yet. I am still
struggling with getting marmalade even functional (it is very bad code
that I inherited).


I am (slowly) getting there.

I said earlier in this thread that I thought recommending a package
archive other than ELPA was a very bad idea. The licence issue is just
one reason.

Another is control and understanding of who wrote what package. MELPA is
anarchy in this regard (which some think is a good thing). Marmalade is
not much better.

Signed packages are being worked on. When I have introduced signed
package functionality to marmalade and when I have introduced the
licence features then I would be happy for marmalade to be included as a
recommendation in an Emacs distribution.

Till then, as the maintainer of Marmalade I would ask you not to do
that.


Nic Ferrier