Re: could matlab-mode be in ELPA or the GNU emacs tree (like auctex and org-mode)?

[Uwe Brauer]

Hi 

I am one of the maintainer of matlab-mode. That code is currently hosted
in sourceforge (with a github mirror) and available as a package in
MELPA.

5 years in a discussion RMS asked in
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-04/msg00429.html

«Is someone making an effort to find the contributors to matlab-mode.el?
How much code do we not have papers for?»

At the moment, however, Mathwork still hold copyright over parts of the code.

That however changed a while ago: Mathwork not only renounced its
copyright, they explicitly asked us to remove any reference to it from
all the files, which we did.

    1. Git blame (or hg annotate for that matter) told me that currently
       the code belongs to only 4 authors, of whom 3 have signed the FSF
       papers, and the other one is in the process of doing so.

    2. There is another point that worries me: According to the
       changelogs at some points the maintainers committed patches from
       other authors, but in their own (the maintainers name).

However, before addressing this problem, I would like to know:

Could matlab-mode become part of ELPA or even could dwell in the GNU
emacs tree?

I know that matlab is a commercial product and its license is not
compatible with the GPL, but the same could be said about MS Windows OS
and MacOS and yet GNU Emacs support these OSs.

It would benefit the users of matlab who wish to use GNU Emacs for coding.

Regards

Uwe Brauer

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