WEBVTT
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Hello, I'm Richard Stallman,
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founder of the GNU project. In 1976, I
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developed the first
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Emacs editor with some help from Guy
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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
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September
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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
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Emacs distribution into a separate
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package archive that we call the Emacs
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Lisp
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package archive ELPA.
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There were two main reasons for this. One
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is to make the Emacs distribution smaller
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so every user wouldn't have to get all
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the packages
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and install all the packages. And the
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other reason was to make it possible to
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release
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individual packages separately
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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
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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. We
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should have
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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 should be
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called some other name.
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Oh, well! Uh this
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is a mistake I believe, because it leads
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to a lot of confusion it would have been
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clearer
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if we had uh used the other naming.
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Because the difference between having a
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package in
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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 and
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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. So, to make
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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
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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
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these packages
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wouldn't even tell us about them. They
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posted them
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in another package archive where we
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didn't know about them
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and (where they) no attempt was made to
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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 non-free
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software in order to be usable
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and technical problems because the
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developers of those packages didn't
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coordinate with us
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about how to make it useful and
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convenient and clean to have them
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in Emacs.
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So, the idea of NonGNU ELPA
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is an effort to smooth these things
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out. 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
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core Emacs;
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at least not easily, but we will
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have some control over how we distribute
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them.
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We can put any package into
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NonGNU ELPA as long as it's free
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software.
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If we like it we can
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set up that way for users to get it.
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We could put the package in exactly as
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it is
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if there's no problem at all with it.
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We can make an arrangement with the
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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
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ELPA
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but if they are not interested we can
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put it in
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ourselves and if we need to make any
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changes we can do so.
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So, NonGNU ELPA
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is not meant to be just a way
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that others can distribute their
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packages.
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It's meant at least in a minimal
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technical
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sense to work with GNU Emacs, and we'll
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make changes if necessary so that it
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works smoothly with
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Emacs. And
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this means that we're going to maintain
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it differently
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from GNU ELPA. Well, GNU ELPA
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is hosted in a way that is actually
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rather inconvenient.
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It is one single Git repository.
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And so anybody that has access to write
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it
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can write any part of it. There are many
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different packages in there maintained
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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. Well, with NonGNU
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ELPA we plan to fix that. The idea is to
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have
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a single Git repository where you can
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download various packages from.
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But, they won't be maintained there. Each
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of those packages will be
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copied automatically from some other
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place.
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Probably some other repository where
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the right people have access to work on
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it.
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And this way we can avoid giving a
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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 please
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write to me.
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I think this is a very important step
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for progress
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and it's got to be implemented.
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Thanks and happy hacking!
