Re: [O] bug#32722: bug#32722: bug#32722: 26.1; Org-publish depend on non-free platform ?

[Adam Porter]

Nicolas Goaziou <address@hidden> writes:

> I assume this is the only way out of this, so I'll have a look at it.
> But I need time. What would help would be some feedback from users
> actually tweaking `org-html-htmlize-output-type'. What do they expect
> from the various values, etc.

I don't understand what's going on here.

The stated problem is that users were encouraged to install software by
visiting GitHub's web site, which uses non-free JavaScript.

It is not, in fact, necessary to execute that JavaScript to use the site
or download htmlize.el.  Emacs' built-in eww browser can be used to
access the site and download the file.  Even Git itself can directly
clone from a URL like http://github.com/username/reponame.  So there is
absolutely no requirement to execute non-free software to retrieve
software from GitHub.  So the stated problem seems moot in the first
place.

Assuming that we would rather go the extra mile and not even direct
users to GitHub, it's been mentioned by two users on this list that the
official htmlize.el repo has been mirrored to code.orgmode.org, with a
cron job to update it every 8 hours, and that this has the official
blessing of the htmlize.el author.  This provides a guilt-free URL to
which users may be directed to retrieve htmlize.el.  This also solves
the stated problem.

That's two solutions to the stated problem.

Yet, we are still talking about rewriting complicated, unfamiliar code
which users depend on, at great cost in time and significant risk of
regressions, and I have not seen any technical reasons for doing so.

Why?  What's going on?