Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Marcel Ventosa]

On Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:10:02 -0400
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
> 
>   > In fact, I would go the extra mile and say Emacs should expressly
>   > warn users over the dangers of installing proprietary software
>   > from unofficial repositories  
> 
> That could be a good idea.  What would be good occasions on which to
> warn?
> 
> Perhaps in list-packages when it sees a non-GNU repo, or when it sees
> MELPA?

Any non-GNU repo that has not made an express commitment to uphold free
sofware values?

> Perhaps in describe-package and packageinstall, when the package comes
> from a non-GNU repo, or specifically from MELPA?
> 
> Any other ideas?

How about something similar to Parabola's `your-freedom' package
approach? It doesn't necessarily have to prevent installation of nonfree
programs like `your-freedom' does, but could present a warning where the
user must expressly agree to run the nonfree package the first time it's
loaded (something similar to the `load-theme' warning).

I'm not sure what the technical difficulties implementing this would be.
It would also require an interested party and an ongoing discussion to
keep an up to date list of such packages. If it amounts to 2-3 packages
as I was told, it might be a very simple task.

This would have the added advantage that individual packages that are
not distributed through repositories could be added as they are
discovered, and that the responsibility for warning users about the
dangers of nonfree programs rests with GNU itself.

Who would have the final say for individual candidate packages? In the
case of Parabola, I know there have been long discussions about whether
certain components of certain programs (such as web browser engines) are
unfree. I find these discussions to be a feature rather than an
inconvenience though.

>   > (by the way, I always just assumed MELPA was
>   > somehow official and related to ELPA, because its name is so
>   > similar to ELPA).  
> 
> Yes, this is a source of confusion.
> 
> Perhaps we should renamme GNU ELPA to a name that will avoid this
> confusion. Maybe GNU EP (GNU Emacs Packages)?
> 
> EP is not meaningful to those who don't know what it means.  But
> neither is ELPA.  People understand it only if they have been told.
> So EP is no worse than ELPA.
> 
> WDYT?

This solution would have saved me from the name related confusion.