Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 11:48:53 +0000
> CC: rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, arthur.miller@live.com,
>   dgutov@yandex.ru
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> 
> That is maybe your way of finding free software. Since 1999 I find it from 
> distributions and if I don't believe it enough I will look into license.

I'm not talking about finding free software, I'm talking about
determining whether a given package is free software, and under what
license it is distributed.  The FSD doesn't give me that information.
It also doesn't give me enough information about related components,
like fonts, for example.

Finding the facts about these components is the bread and butter of
every GNU maintainer for a more-or-less complex GNU package.  Not
being able to do this part of my job with GNU-endorsed free software
is a major blow.  And the most painful part of that blow is that I
cannot understand the reasons for it.  Once again, repology.org does
NOT promote any software packages it lists, regardless of what you'd
like to represent.

Likewise, such limitations prevents users from being able to study
source code of any package that shows its code, something I think is
detrimental to free exchange of ideas about software, which I always
thought was the important goal of GNU.