bug#16250: Feature request: package license information and home page

[Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>]

tags 16250 + wontfix
close 16250
thanks

Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:

> There should be an easy way to find out the
> license information and other metadata about a package before installing
> it.  Ideally this information should show up in the results of
> package-menu-describe-package

Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

>>> > Some people (like me) are picky about the license terms of software that
>>> > they download, especially in source form.
>>> Give me some examples of Elisp packages where that would be useful.
>> Any package is a potential example.
>
> 99.9% of Elisp packages are licensed under the GPL.  I doubt these would
> be convincing examples of the need to check the licensing info.
> And the remaining 0.1% is licensed under a GPL-compatible license, BTW
> (because any Elisp package necessarily links to GPL'd code, either
> Emacs's or XEmacs's, so it's basically illegal to distribute Elisp code
> under anything else than a GPL-compatible license).
>
>> If you could explain what you’re after maybe I could say
>> something useful.
>
> An example package where it can be useful to know what license is used.

That was in 2013, and I agree with Stefan that this feature doesn't sound worth
it.  It's all GPL compatible.  FWIW, Debian doesn't show this in aptitude
either.

The homepage is already available in package-menu-describe-package.

I've therefore closed this as wontfix.  If anyone disagrees, feel free
to re-open.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas