Re: GnuTLS for W32

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:40:34 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote: 

SJT> I'm not sure that the above even applies to Ted, though.  AIUI, you
SJT> misread Ted's main argument, which is that an automatic notification
SJT> service for security updates (not necessarily involving distribution
SJT> of GnuTLS binaries for Windows users, though it *could* eventually do
SJT> so) would be beneficial for (almost) all Emacs users and therefore the
SJT> project.

What I've now propsed, after Chong clarified the maintainers' position,
is the same service, enabled by default but with no packages (so an
interested user only has to customize one variable and it does nothing
otherwise).  I think that's the middle ground we've been looking for.

I only need to know, from Stefan or Chong, if that proposal is OK and if
it should go into the current trunk or if it should wait until 24.1 is out.

On Sun, 08 Jan 2012 03:34:46 -0500 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote: 

EZ> Building these add-ons and providing installers for them must be a job
EZ> of a separate group of volunteers, not of the Emacs project.  The job
EZ> of the Emacs project is to provide infrastructure for integration with
EZ> those add-ons, such as dynamic-library-alist populated with the names
EZ> of the supported DLLs and the machinery to load the DLLs on demand.

>> But this is not petty, it's fundamental!  Proponents who argue that
>> distribution of GnuTLS binaries is needed for Windows users are
>> ignoring a very important distinction: users (new adopters) of the GNU
>> System (and at lower priority, free OSes in general) vs. users of
>> non-free OSes and OSes whose attractiveness is based on non-free
>> software.  Supporting the former is the policy of GNU Emacs;
>> supporting the latter is not (though of course individual developers
>> are free to contribute to such support if they like).

EZ> That is true, but we don't even distribute GnuTLS for GNU systems, so
EZ> talking about doing that for Windows is _really_ far-fetched.

Let's agree the GNU Emacs project will not be distributing GnuTLS (or
any other third-party library) binaries for any platform.  I think I was
clear on that from the beginning but maybe I did not state it well.

My proposals for distributing binaries were either a GNU ELPA package; a
standalone GnuTLS installer; or an Emacs installer (anything but
downloading a zip file!).  Through our discussion I've seen that an
Emacs installer/patcher as Joakim suggested is the best choice, with a
GNU ELPA package set up as an opt-in update notifier if my notification
proposal above is approved.

Ted