emacs-devel
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: What is GNU ELPA?


From: Dmitry Gutov
Subject: Re: What is GNU ELPA?
Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 23:24:58 +0300
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.7.0

Hi Eli,

On 16.05.2020 17:43, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

- More generally give more freedom to the authors (many authors are
   *not* interested in having their code in emacs.git because of the
   extra constraints that it implies).

The last two problems *also* affect GNU ELPA, ironically, tho to
a lesser extent.

I'm sorry to say, but I feel we are trying to retroactively invent
reasons to justify the actual situation and the goals that got shifted
from their original.  As the description of ELPA shows, the original
goal was to have an extension of Emacs that is separate for minor
technical reasons.

You seem to be trying to produce logical rules for governing ELPA based on two lines from the manual written by Glenn likely on a whim 4 years after GNU ELPA was created.

And does it really matter why it was created originally? Perhaps it was made to fight forest fires or raise awareness about the surveillance state. Does that really matter now, 10 years later?

GNU ELPA is where it is because it turned out useful enough for both sides (users and package authors) that the latter contributed a considerable number of packages, and a significant fraction of them continues to be updated. Making the situation worse for either side can break the balance, and there will be fewer updates, as a result it will be less useful for the users, and in the end we could simply be forced to write it off as a failure.

The current situation is, it is okay-ish for the authors (for reasons Stefan described), though probably not ideal for minor technical reasons. As well a copyright assignment reasons, but that acts as a filter.

This filter, however, makes it not great for the users, because the result is, we provide less functionality out-of-the-box. Hopefully I don't have to explain why this is a problem.

On the authors' side, however, if you decide to dispense with some of the reasons people contribute to GNU ELPA, that can also lead to fewer packages in there, and the result for the users is predictable.



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]