Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Philip K.]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> 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. ]]]
>
>   > In fact, I would go the extra mile and say Emacs should expressly warn
>   > users over the dangers of installing proprietary software from
>   > unofficial repositories
>
> That could be a good idea.  What would be good occasions on which to warn?
>
> Perhaps in list-packages when it sees a non-GNU repo, or when it sees MELPA?
>
> Perhaps in describe-package and packageinstall, when the package comes
> from a non-GNU repo, or specifically from MELPA?
>
> Any other ideas?

This is a weaker suggestion: Maybe packages could have a tag to signal
that they are related to proprietary software, that could be then
displayed both via list-packages and describe-package? I'm fairly sure
that MELPA would encourage or even require people to add this tag.
Most software on MELPA is "ok", and people (like me) choose to use it
because is offers more packages than ELPA.

>                             (by the way, I always just assumed MELPA was
>   > somehow official and related to ELPA, because its name is so similar to
>   > ELPA).
>
> Yes, this is a source of confusion.
>
> Perhaps we should renamme GNU ELPA to a name that will avoid this confusion.
> Maybe GNU EP (GNU Emacs Packages)?
>
> EP is not meaningful to those who don't know what it means.  But
> neither is ELPA.  People understand it only if they have been told.
> So EP is no worse than ELPA.
>
> WDYT?

There shouldn't be any reason for ELPA to rename itself, it should be
clear that MELPA is not official, as it is not pre-configured.

-- 
        Philip K.