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Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit
From: |
Phillip Lord |
Subject: |
Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit |
Date: |
Thu, 06 Jul 2017 16:24:51 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.2.50 (gnu/linux) |
Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> > I'm afraid that you guys are missing the point. This has no relation
> > with the maintainer of Magit, but with the fact that Magit cannot be
> > distributed with Emacs.
>
> You've hit the nail on the head. I am not saying anything either good
> or bad about Magit as such, because that's not the issue here.
>
> We have a problem in Emacs: it doesn't contain a good interface to
> git. People often recommend something that is not in Emacs. That's
> not a good situation. I want to fix it.
>
> In principle, we could fix it with Magit. I would be very glad if we
> did. That would require tracking down lots of people and convincing
> them to sign the legal papers, and maybe replacing some pieces of code
> whose authors didn't sign.
>
> A year ago, more or less, I asked people if we could do this and I was
> told it was impossible.
It is not impossible, just difficult and time-consuming. I would relate
my experiences with getting copyright assignment for dash (33
contributors vs 200, no dependencies vs 4 dependencies).
Almost everybody I asked about copyright assignment said yes. Those who
did not just did not reply and have disappeared from the web. I
contacted everybody through their emails in git. I had to write out one
function, of about 14 lines.
The problem is that the process is currently blind. I email all the
developers, but I can't tell who already has assignment. Those who do
not, I email information to, but then cannot tell who has sent the
request forms out. Then I email again, to see whether they have
assignment forms, because I get no notification when the process has
completed. Copyright assignment is, per se, a big slow down. But, with
the FSF process, it's even harder. I know that some people can see the
assignments, but AFAICT, there is not notification of when this changes.
Installing some kind of ticket system, and a method for letting people
declare whether they have assignment already would be an enormous help.
As it stood, I think, dash.el took 4 months, because of the necessity
for the to-ing and fro-ing. dash.el in ELPA is now several versions
behind, because it's has some new contributors since, and I haven't been
able to get the energy up to start the process again. We also now have
seq.el, most of whose functionality is covered by dash; an unfortunate
and unnecessary duplication.
The FSF has a donations drive every year. Can you not spend some of that
on making the process easier? Even a public website showing people with
assignment (who are willing to be public) would help. And, another
copyright assignment clerk who can help with the process of emailing
everyone in a project like magit.
After that, getting magit into Emacs or ELPA might be less impossible
after all.
Phil
- Re: In defense of VC [was: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit], (continued)
- Re: In defense of VC [was: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit], Andreas Schwab, 2017/07/11
- Re: In defense of VC [was: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit], Michael Albinus, 2017/07/11
- Re: In defense of VC [was: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit], Richard Stallman, 2017/07/11
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Richard Stallman, 2017/07/10
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Marcin Borkowski, 2017/07/10
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Richard Stallman, 2017/07/10
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Marcin Borkowski, 2017/07/11
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit,
Phillip Lord <=
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Richard Stallman, 2017/07/10
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Phillip Lord, 2017/07/10
- Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Richard Stallman, 2017/07/11
Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit, Stefan Monnier, 2017/07/05
Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit (was: comparing code on different branches), Noam Postavsky, 2017/07/05