On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[divya]

Hello Emacs Devel,

I stumbled upon the huge patch in #49065 just after discovering 
`commercial-emacs`. I have two concerns:

- There hasn't been any work in reviewing the patch, and I want to give 
it a shot. Especially the parts concerning Gnus.

- The writing in README of commercial-emacs repository, sounds weird if 
not hostile?

> Ah, but if it could reach those heights. If by some miracle it did, the 
> choices for the FSF are the same as before: enlist RMS to embark on a 
> coding frenzy that achieves feature parity, grant myself commit rights, 
> or continue not noticing me. If my history of user acquisition is any 
> indication, the last outcome is most likely.

https://shmelpa.commandlinesystems.com/

What is the cause for this hostility? From what I'm able to see in the 
discussion after the patch was posted, the maintainers basically asked 
dick to divide the huge patch into smaller pieces so that it is feasible 
to review and merge it. I have seen no signs of hostility, so I do not 
understand this gesture of forking and saying rudely that FSF would be 
racing for feature parity or something. Maybe I'm getting this wrongly, 
but it does feel a bit arrogant.

Also, are there any license/copyright issues if one could get their 
patch merged? From what I understand, there shouldn't be, since the 
patch was made to Emacs and the fork also is GPL.

Moreover, from the site:

> This is the oft ideated, never sublimated “forge” repository for emacs. 
> As it is hosted on a site using non-free software, the work herein is 
> not the official GNU Emacs source, and does not entreat the FSF to 
> enforce its license.

GPL enforces all derivatives to also be copyleft, as it should, to 
ensure that the libre nature of the software doesn't get removed. So, 
what does "does not entreat the FSF to enforce its license" mean?

I would like to begin work on this patch within a week or so, and would 
have a lot of questions for the maintainers and, of course, Lars.

Regards,

Divya Ranjan
Mathematics, Philosophy and Libre Software.

Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2024 02:33:42 +0000
> From: divya@subvertising.org
> 
> I stumbled upon the huge patch in #49065 just after discovering 
> `commercial-emacs`. I have two concerns:
> 
> - There hasn't been any work in reviewing the patch, and I want to give 
> it a shot. Especially the parts concerning Gnus.
> 
> - The writing in README of commercial-emacs repository, sounds weird if 
> not hostile?
> 
> > Ah, but if it could reach those heights. If by some miracle it did, the 
> > choices for the FSF are the same as before: enlist RMS to embark on a 
> > coding frenzy that achieves feature parity, grant myself commit rights, 
> > or continue not noticing me. If my history of user acquisition is any 
> > indication, the last outcome is most likely.
> 
> https://shmelpa.commandlinesystems.com/
> 
> What is the cause for this hostility?

You will have to ask the author.

Alternatively (and only if you have enough free time on your hands),
you can read all of his posts to the Emacs lists, and try to answer
the question yourself judging by what you read.

> Also, are there any license/copyright issues if one could get their 
> patch merged? From what I understand, there shouldn't be, since the 
> patch was made to Emacs and the fork also is GPL.

His copyright assignment for Emacs is still on file, so using his code
in Emacs should be okay, AFAIU.

By contrast, I see no assignment from you, so if you want to work on
this, my recommendation is to start your copyright assignment work
ASAP (if you agree, I can send you the form to fill and the
instructions to go with it).

> I would like to begin work on this patch within a week or so, and would 
> have a lot of questions for the maintainers and, of course, Lars.

Feel free to ask the questions, although sadly our Gnus experts are
somewhat less active lately, so be prepared for long delays in
answering at least some questions.

TIA

Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[Divya]

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On 3 October 2024 07:03:43 GMT, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2024 02:33:42 +0000
>> From: divya@subvertising.org
>> 
>> I stumbled upon the huge patch in #49065 just after discovering 
>> `commercial-emacs`. I have two concerns:
>> 
>> - There hasn't been any work in reviewing the patch, and I want to give 
>> it a shot. Especially the parts concerning Gnus.
>> 
>> - The writing in README of commercial-emacs repository, sounds weird if 
>> not hostile?
>> 
>> > Ah, but if it could reach those heights. If by some miracle it did, the 
>> > choices for the FSF are the same as before: enlist RMS to embark on a 
>> > coding frenzy that achieves feature parity, grant myself commit rights, 
>> > or continue not noticing me. If my history of user acquisition is any 
>> > indication, the last outcome is most likely.
>> 
>> https://shmelpa.commandlinesystems.com/
>> 
>> What is the cause for this hostility?
>
>You will have to ask the author.
>
>Alternatively (and only if you have enough free time on your hands),
>you can read all of his posts to the Emacs lists, and try to answer
>the question yourself judging by what you read.
>
>> Also, are there any license/copyright issues if one could get their 
>> patch merged? From what I understand, there shouldn't be, since the 
>> patch was made to Emacs and the fork also is GPL.
>
>His copyright assignment for Emacs is still on file, so using his code
>in Emacs should be okay, AFAIU.
>
>By contrast, I see no assignment from you, so if you want to work on
>this, my recommendation is to start your copyright assignment work
>ASAP (if you agree, I can send you the form to fill and the
>instructions to go with it).
>
>> I would like to begin work on this patch within a week or so, and would 
>> have a lot of questions for the maintainers and, of course, Lars.
>
>Feel free to ask the questions, although sadly our Gnus experts are
>somewhat less active lately, so be prepared for long delays in
>answering at least some questions.
>
>TIA

Thanks, Eli. I've started the assignment process, and sent the form yesterday.

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Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[James Thomas]

divya@subvertising.org wrote:

> I would like to begin work on this patch within a week or so, and
> would have a lot of questions for the maintainers and, of course,
> Lars.

ICYDK, here are two more links that might be relevant:

- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-02/msg00017.html
- bug#38136

Good luck!

--

Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[Björn Bidar]

divya@subvertising.org writes:

> I stumbled upon the huge patch in #49065 just after discovering
> `commercial-emacs`. I have two concerns:
>
> - There hasn't been any work in reviewing the patch, and I want to
>   give it a shot. Especially the parts concerning Gnus.

Hey,

I tried to look into the patches that he send in said bug.
However for me the issue was that the changes where wrapped in other
changes that seemingly looked off-topic to the goal of having
asynchronous fetching in Gnus.
It was very hard to see what's what. He tried to rework somethings,
complained about legacy gnus behavior and some issues regarding
threading in Gnus.

All in this person is very hard to interact with, personally as well
as the description and the lack of order in his changes.

Originally the patches where for Emacs 28 but there might be other newer
changes in the master branch of his project.
There's no topic branch or so that only contains the Gnus changes.

Thanks for looking into the bug,

Björn

Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[Divya Ranjan]

James Thomas <jimjoe@gmx.net> writes:

> ICYDK, here are two more links that might be relevant:
>
> - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-02/msg00017.html
> - bug#38136
>
> Good luck!

Thank you, James! I did come across that while reading upon the bug, but
I was confused why it wasn’t continued with. Did Manuel’s patch work?
CC’ing Manuel for further discussion.

Regards,
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software

Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello Björn!

> I tried to look into the patches that he send in said bug.
> However for me the issue was that the changes where wrapped in other
> changes that seemingly looked off-topic to the goal of having
> asynchronous fetching in Gnus.
> It was very hard to see what's what. He tried to rework somethings,
> complained about legacy gnus behavior and some issues regarding
> threading in Gnus.

Indeed, that was one of my first impressions from the patch as well. And
that is going to be the first hard task, to separate things from each other.

> All in this person is very hard to interact with, personally as well
> as the description and the lack of order in his changes.

Agreed, that is visible from the nature of his interaction, and the tone
of the text in the project page.

> Originally the patches where for Emacs 28 but there might be other newer
> changes in the master branch of his project.
> There's no topic branch or so that only contains the Gnus changes.

I was planning to mostly work on the patch that he sent, but it’s also
probably a good idea to look into the project as well. Since it’s GPL,
shouldn’t be an issue.

> Thanks for looking into the bug,

Would you be interested in teaming up for this? It could be a good idea,
given the humongous tasks.

Regards,

Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics and Libre Software

Re: On Bug #49065 and commercial-emacs

[Manuel Giraud via Emacs development discussions.]

Divya Ranjan <divya@subvertising.org> writes:

> James Thomas <jimjoe@gmx.net> writes:
>
>> ICYDK, here are two more links that might be relevant:
>>
>> - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-02/msg00017.html
>> - bug#38136
>>
>> Good luck!
>
> Thank you, James! I did come across that while reading upon the bug, but
> I was confused why it wasn’t continued with. Did Manuel’s patch work?
> CC’ing Manuel for further discussion.

Hi Divya,

Thanks for working on this I'm also a Gnus user and I think it would be
a great improvement.

Sadly, I failed to do what I wanted and finally gave up.  Maybe trying
to merge the relevant part of dickmao's patch is the way to go, I don't
know.

It seems to me that Gnus is quite a big software and that it is really
deeply "serial" (eg. a user command -> do thing 1 -> sub-do thing 2 ->
sub-sub-do thing 3 -> return up the callstack...).  So my idea was that
maybe it was possible to have some parallelism (with emacs threads for
example) only in some strategic places to have a less blocking Gnus.

Anyway best regards and good luck,
-- 
Manuel Giraud