On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 4:46 AM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

>>> There should be an easy way to find out the license information and
>> Why?
> 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. I’m not sure what you’re looking for here, and I don’t suppose you want an arbitrary list of the first 50 packages listed at MELPA. If you could explain what you’re after maybe I could say something useful.

>>> other metadata about a package before installing it.
>> Which other metadata?
> For example, a package's home page, author, maybe date of last update, etc.

The home page is already available, AFAIK. Author/maintainer could
be provided. Date of last update is generally not kept (tho in
elpa.gnu.org/packages you can indeed see it, tho it's really the date
at which the tarball was created).

I think the better option is to let the user separate the "download" and
"install" steps so she can look at those extra info before installing.

That won’t help people whose employers have specific rules restricting the license terms of code that may be *downloaded to the employers’ machines* without prior approval.

Dave Abrahams