Re: NPM importer

[Brett Gilio]

swedebugia writes:

> Hi
>
> On 2018-11-22 00:22, swedebugia wrote:
> snip
>
>> A graph of all npm packages and top packages is also available:
>> https://exploring-data.com/info/npm-packages-dependencies/
>
> While investigating the top libraries* packages with most depends in
> npm I found the following:
>
> Lib           Dep     DevDep  RecdevDep       Dependants      license
> underscore    0       12      2400+           18000+          mit
> async         1       37      2696            26069           mit
>
> rec=recursive
>
> See also the issue I created here:
> https://github.com/caolan/async/issues/1600 asking which of asyncs 37
> devdeps are needed to build or build+test async.
>
> And similar here: https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/issues/2790


Holy cow.

Thank you for taking the initiative on this, swedebugia. I tend to agree
with your licensee approach, but I think this will require an undoubted
good deal of man power before we are able to sufficiently move forward
on npm imports with a decent velocity.

I know that the largest issue of this as usual will be the JavaScript
trap, but there will have to be some compromises on the part of people
wanting to develop for Node on Guix when their libraries are missing due
to non-free or ambiguous licensing. Not the least of which being the
issues surrounding Electron on the Chromium licenses, which seems to be
where a lot of energy is lately on the Node development side.

I also do not want Guix to detract too much for "more important issues",
not to say this isn't important. Just perhaps it isn't as much of a
priority simply because that community and ours are not so cohesive at
the current moment.

I guess one could argue that we should be wanting to bring them to us,
but I also know how disuasive "a lack of convenience" can be to those
who are not as freedom and ethicality conscious as the rest of us.

Brett Gilio