Re: [ELPA] New package: kixtart-mode

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

Morgan Willcock [2022-11-09 23:48:25] wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 09, 2022 22:04 GMT, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 
>> > Would there be any issues in adding the package?
>> 
>> There is one issue, yes: is KiXtart Free Software?
>> According to Wikipedia, the license is "Closed source Careware".
>> And indeed, I can't find any source code on http://www.kixtart.org/.
>> If that's indeed proprietary code, then I think we probably wouldn't
>> want to host `kixtart-mode` on (Non)GNU ELPA.
>
> There is no dependency or inter-op with the interpreter, and the package
> was developed independently - since the source code is not available it
> is also impossible for me to create any link to it.

Yes, I understand this.  The question is rather one of policy/strategy
than one of copyright.

> But if this is the final decision I'll live with it.

I can never remember exactly what is the policy in such cases, so I'm
hoping Richard will chime in.  AFAIK the general rule is that we don't
want to distribute packages which are only meaningful when you use
proprietary software, but the details matter (e.g. is it likely that
someone will choose to use another editor to edit their KiXtart code, is
it likely that someone will start to use KiXtart because it has a nice
Emacs mode, ...).

>> Find below my sig a suggested patch to fix a few minor issues I found
>> along the way (the main one is arguably the way `kixtart-tempo-tags`
>> is passed to `tempo-define-template`).
> Thanks for taking a look. Are you happy if I take your patch, regardless
> of where the package ends up?

Yes, of course :-)


        Stefan