RMS: Don't encourage people to use Melpa, ELPA does not cooperate with us

I suggest someone to install Magit + Forge to compare with VC mode. Now RMS replies this and later they tell that just using Melpa is bad because it encourage the use or distribution of non-free packages: >\> From: Björn Bidar <email>> Cc: Richard Stallman <email, mail,> email, [eliz@gnu.org](mailto:eliz@gnu.org), [emacs-devel@gnu.org](mailto:emacs-devel@gnu.org)\> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 15:01:24 +0200 > >\>> I am objecting against the assumption Melpa equals bad. I can understand> the issue with some of it's packages or even the place of distribution> but it hard to replace a platform like Github for the network effect it > >\> has.No one says MELPA equals bad, and Github is not the issue here. Wejust avoid recommending people to use MELPA because doing so couldaccidentally cause someone to install non-free packages, or packagesthat proliferate or require non-free programs. It's a preferencething, not a damnation. While Elpa contains such Packages as Exchange support.. (Excorporate).[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-11/msg00743.html](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-11/msg00743.html)

that’s how GNU operates. you are free to disagree but you were out of line firing back at him on on that mailing list and you are out of line trying to villainize him here.

I can tell you're new to emacs-devel. Most of us skip right over his out-of-touch messages. Some humor him for his grand old man status. A few zealots do take him seriously but none of them contribute useful code.

You quoted RMS quite misleading in the subject line. That’s definitely not what he said.

> Most of us skip right over his out-of-touch messages The smart thing is not to "skip right over" and not to consider anyone "out-of-touch" just because he or she sounds strangely out of the ordinary. The smart thing is to try to take every single piece of useful insight and experience in the opinions of others, because that way you learn from the experience of others and see aspects you could have missed. I've yet to see a person with 50 years of experience of developing software and leading others from whom I could not learn anything. You don't have to agree with them or even like them, but dismiss their opinions is just silly, IME.

[deleted]

> I've yet to see a person with 50 years of experience of developing software In your case, the sufficient bound is closer to 5.

> Most of us Speak for yourself. Frankly, I've skipped over more of your pretentious writing than anyone else's. > few zealots do take him seriously but none of them contribute useful code. Most of us start our own forks of Emacs rather than attempt to play by the rules of the devel team. That way we can make breaking changes without consideration and don't have to worry about testing on any machines besides our own. Are you familiar with "Commercial Emacs"? It's got a great name because people generally skip commercials.

> don't have to worry about testing on any machines besides our own If it weren't obvious the goal is to get the (non-ideological) community off savannah and onto github. It's a bootstrap issue to be sure. You can't test without users. You can't get users without the assurances of testing. Commercial's CI runs some weak-sauce smoke tests for all three platforms, which I guess is marginally better than GNU's emba half-measure.

It's convenient to ignore the social issues and focus on the technical, too.

Out of line for telling that he said things about Melpa that are not true?

I don't see your issue with Savanah besides the outdated design. They would either use a more modern design or switch to Gitea, Gitlab or something. Github isn't the solution.

I quote RMS except the please part: >Please do not encourage people to load packages from MELPA. MELPA does not cooperate with us.

If you are dislexic, I apologize. If not, please re-read carefully what you wrote. If you still don’t get it, I must assume you don’t know the difference between ELPA and MELPA.

Perhaps you didn’t realize that Magit is also on nonGNU ELPA, which was part of the context of this discussion. https://elpa.nongnu.org/nongnu/magit.html

This is his issue: > MELPA includes packages that recommend specific nonfree programs. Is this statement unclear to you? And this is you being out of line: > Your narrow minded view hurts your mission in the end.. Gplv3 all over again..

Forge isn't.

English isn't my mother tongue. I get the difference but I didn't hear that Melpa didn't corporate with Emacs or distribute or encourage the use of non-free sotware, at least not more than Elpa does.

Have a close look at this thread’s subject. You wrote ELPA (without an "M"), which doesn’t make sense at all and is a false quotation of RMS. Bitte lies Dir den Titel dieses Threads nochmal genau durch: Du hast ELPA (ohne "M") geschrieben, was sinnentstellend ist und RMS nicht korrekt wiedergibt.

Please read the full thread on the mailing list and reread the title on reddit. In your title on Reddit, in addition to missing the “Please” and the context, which may be OK if you added a comment with a summary, you also misspelled MELPA as ELPA, which changes the meaning rather dramatically. In the mailing list thread, a person misunderstood the gentle nudge by RMS as some kind of strict rule.

>MELPA includes packages that recommend specific nonfree programs. > >Is this statement unclear to you? It is not unclear but false, at least if you ignore that both contain each program that interacts or encourages the use of non-free software. Melpa does contain helm-lastpass which encourages or interacts with [lastpass.com](https://lastpass.com) through lastpass-cli (GPLv2), lastpass is a non-free cloud platform. Elpa does contain Excorporate which interacts with the non-free program Microsoft Exchange or non-free cloud platforms based on it. If these kind of instances count than both contain packages that encourage the use of non-free software.

That’s right. And it’s a wonderful specific package that’s available (on MELPA) to those who need it.

>And this is you being out of line: > >Your narrow minded view hurts your mission in the end.. Gplv3 all over again.. Yes and I apologized after that: >I didn't mean to attack but to criticize him, I didn't mean to personally attack him with my language, I'm sorry.

Yes and it is was exactly the package I was referring to before RMS wrote the message I was linking too: >It is available on Melpa? Just add it. It did work fine for others, just ask in case you have issues. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-11/msg00553.html

Oh misst. Ja tut mir leid, ich übersehe manchmal Wörter oder Zeichen zu schreiben, weis aber nicht ob das als Dyslexia zählt.

Oh shit yeah I've only saw that I missed the M in MELPA after writing the post but I can't edit the title. Besides that I thought excluding the please was fine as I linked his message.

[deleted]

I would like it if Philip Kaludercic found a way to make it easy to install it from source via package-vc and / or if it was added to nonGNU ELPA. I don’t think that the nuanced view of RMS limits people from picking to add a package if they need it, however there are differences in the implicit guarantees (or aspirations) that ELPA, nonGNU ELPA, and MELPA provide.

[deleted]

[deleted]