Re: Adding advisory notification for non-ELPA package.el downloads

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > - maintainers of the package will not be reminded that the package is
  >   also in GNU ELPA (and should hence adhere to a copyright assignment
  >   policy).

  > - While the repository may be under the sole control of the package
  >   maintainer when the package is added to GNU ELPA, that can and will
  >   evolve over time, completely outside of our control.

  > - There is no easy way for us (Emacs maintainers) to install fixes to
  >   adapt to changes in Emacs.  More specifically, it needs to be done by
  >   hand package-by-package, by submitting a patch and hoping the upstream
  >   maintainer is still listening.

  > - Handling old unmaintained packages is more trouble.

One way to prevent these problems is by insisting they give the Emacs
maintainers administrative access to the real package repository.
Then we could install notices about legal papers, take action if
non-signers have write access, install fixes, and handling old
unmaintained packages with little more trouble than they are now.


  > - We won't get elpa-diffs email, where we have the opportunity to give
  >   advice on coding style and have a minimum amount of review of the code
  >   we end up distributing.

That would be a loss, but can we install another system to send diff
mail?  It could operate on a clone of the real package repository.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.