Re: Why are so many great packages not trying to get included in GNU Emacs?

[Phillip Lord]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> I don't understand this logic. If most (although not all) of the
>> information in copyright.list can be gleaned from running git log, or
>> looking at AUTHORS,
>
> The official list is not specific to Emacs, includes real names (for
> people who are otherwise only known via pseudonyms), birthdates,
> countries, and other such info.
> so it's quite different from the info you can get from Git.
>
>> where is the privacy issue?
>
> To be honest, I'm not sure.  I'd also like to know since without with
> info it's hard to figure out what could be done.
>
> E.g. would it OK if I filtered the list to only include paperwork that
> covers contributions to Emacs and that only includes the names and
> email addresses?
> I think it would satisfy your use case, but would it be acceptable in
> terms of privacy?  I don't know!
>
>> What not ask everyone when they submit their papers, if they are happy
>> to be public, along with a list of their commonly used aliases, emails
>> and so forth?
>
> That would be great.  Note that we (maintainers) don't have any direct
> involvement in this, sadly.  The list is maintained by the FSF's
> "clerk", so we should move this conversation there.
>
>> Put this information up on the web, along with a RESTful API.
>> Add some command line tools, so that people can add it to the
>> CI tooling.
>
> Even better, yes,


I have tried having this discussion before. We did get a partly working
system which was marginally better than asking copyright@fsf everytime,
but I think it only partly worked, required me to keep manual records of
where requests where and so forth.

Ultimately, anything that we do from here is going to cost time and/or
money either in development or just going through the entire list and
asking everyones permission. For Emacs, development, I am sure it would
be worth it.

Richard, I have cc'd you in. What would be the governance proceedure to
follow to have the FSF investigate and do this work, to make it easier
to check copyright assignment.

Phil