WEBVTT
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Hello, I'm Richard Stallman,
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founder of the GNU project.
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In 1976, I developed the first
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Emacs editor with some help
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from Guy Steele.
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Then, shortly after starting to develop
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the GNU operating system in 1984,
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I wanted an Emacs editor for it.
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So I started writing GNU Emacs in
September 1984.
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Several years ago we decided to move
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many of the Emacs Lisp packages outside
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the core Emacs distribution into
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a separate package archive that we call
the Emacs Lisp package archive ELPA.
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There were two main reasons for this.
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One is to make the Emacs
distribution smaller
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so every user wouldn't have to
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get all the packages
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and install all the packages.
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And the other reason was to make it
possible to
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release individual packages
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separately from Emacs releases.
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Now, at that point somehow we decided to
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support loading packages from
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a variety of different Emacs Lisp
package archives
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and ours would be called the GNU ELPA,
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but ELPA could be any other.
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Now, I think that naming was a mistake.
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We should have meant, we should have
decided that ELPA
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referred to our package archive
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and any other package archive
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should be called some other name.
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Oh, well! Uh this is a mistake,
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I believe, because it leads
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to a lot of confusion.
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It would have been clearer
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if we had used the other naming.
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Because the difference between
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having a package in core Emacs and
having it in GNU ELPA,
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is purely a practical convenience matter.
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Convenience of distribution
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and convenience of maintenance.
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We wanted to be able to move packages
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between the two
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whenever that was convenient.
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So, to make that possible
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we insisted on getting copyright
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assignments for packages in GNU ELPA
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just the same way we do for packages in
core Emacs.
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Having the facility for installing
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packages from package archives,
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led to a tremendous boost in the
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development and release of Emacs packages.
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Unfortunately there was a problem with
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the way that was done.
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For the most part, the developers of
these packages
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wouldn't even tell us about them.
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They posted them in another package
archive
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where we didn't know about them
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and no attempt was made to
try to fit them
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into Emacs so that they could make sense
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as parts of the Emacs distribution.
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This led to both moral problems,
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(packages that depended on
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non-free software in order to be usable)
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and technical problems,
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because the developers of those packages
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didn't coordinate with us
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about how to make it useful and
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convenient and clean to have them in
Emacs.
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So, the idea of NonGNU ELPA
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is an effort to smooth these
things out.
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The fundamental plan of
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NonGNU ELPA is that
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we won't ask for copyright assignments
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for those packages.
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So, we won't be able to put them into
core Emacs;
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at least not easily,
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but we will have some control over how
we distribute them.
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We can put any package into NonGNU ELPA
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as long as it's free software.
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If we like it, we can set up that way
for users to get it.
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We could put the package in
exactly as it is
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if there's no problem at all with it.
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We can make an arrangement
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with the package's developers
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to work on it with us and maintain it
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directly for distribution by NonGNU ELPA,
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but if they are not interested,
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we can put it in ourselves,
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and if we need to make any changes,
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we can do so.
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So, NonGNU ELPA is not meant to be
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just a way that others can distribute
their packages.
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It's meant, at least in
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a minimal technical sense,
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to work with GNU Emacs,
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and we'll make changes if necessary,
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so that it works smoothly with Emacs.
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And this means that we're going to
maintain it differently from GNU ELPA.
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Well, GNU ELPA is hosted in a way that
is actually rather inconvenient.
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It is one single Git repository.
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And so anybody that has access
to write it
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can write any part of it.
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There are many different packages in
there, maintained by different people,
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and we have no way to give each one of
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them access to per own package
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and not to the others.
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Well, with NonGNU ELPA,
we plan to fix that.
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The idea is to have
a single Git repository
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where you can download various packages from.
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But they won't be maintained there.
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Each of those packages will be
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copied automatically from some other place.
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Probably some other repository
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where the right people have access to work on it.
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And this way we can avoid giving
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a gigantic number of people
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access to every part of it.
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So far NonGNU ELPA is just a plan,
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we need people to implement the plan.
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So, if you would like to help,
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please write to me.
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I think this is a very important step for progress
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and it's got to be implemented.
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Thanks and happy hacking!
