Subject: Re: bug#16250: Feature request: package license information and home page

From: Dave Abrahams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2013 10:23:04 -0800

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 4:46 AM, Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>wrote:

> >>> There should be an easy way to find out the license information and
> >> Why?
> > Some people (like me) are picky about the license terms of software that
> > they download, especially in source form.
>
> Give me some examples of Elisp packages where that would be useful.
>

Any package is a potential example.  I’m not sure what you’re looking for
here, and I don’t suppose you want an arbitrary list of the first 50
packages listed at MELPA.  If you could explain what you’re after maybe I
could say something useful.

> >>> other metadata about a package before installing it.
> >> Which other metadata?
> > For example, a package's home page, author, maybe date of last update,
> etc.
>
> The home page is already available, AFAIK.  Author/maintainer could
> be provided.  Date of last update is generally not kept (tho in
> elpa.gnu.org/packages you can indeed see it, tho it's really the date
> at which the tarball was created).
>
> I think the better option is to let the user separate the "download" and
> "install" steps so she can look at those extra info before installing.

That won’t help people whose employers have specific rules restricting the
license terms of code that may be *downloaded to the employers’ machines*
without prior approval.

-- 
Dave Abrahams