unsupported packages area in the Emacs repo (was: Autoload from a web page?)

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:46:15 -0500 Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote: 

RS>     This is just a suggestion: considering that Emacs has moved to a
RS>     powerful DVCS, maybe it makes sense to make ELPA and emacsmirror.org
RS>     hook into the Emacs repo.  Give commit bits and some structure to a few
RS>     people within an isolated "unsupported packages" area, and then let them
RS>     organize that area and the interfaces to it, including tracking of
RS>     foreign packages and repos, any way they see fit.  As long as it's clear
RS>     that it's an area for unsupported packages, this has the benefit of
RS>     integrating Emacs with the packages people find useful.

RS> This might be a good idea, but we want to get copyright assignments for
RS> these packages just as we do for the "supported" parts of Emacs.
RS> That way we can move Lisp files between the two categories based on
RS> practical motives.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense.  Promotion could work like Apache's
incubation process or like Haskell's hackage system, or in another way
more suited to Emacs' model.  I think we should also consider demotion
for packages that should not be supported but are still marginally
useful.

I hope Tom Tromey and Jonas Bernoulli are interested in participating
too, and that the Emacs maintainers are willing to give this a try.
FWIW I will help any way I can and I think it would really improve the
Emacs user experience to install unsupported packages easily.

Ted