Comment 8 for bug 25544

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:12:40 +0100
From: Sven Joachim <email address hidden>
To: Peter S Galbraith <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#338333: emacs-goodies-el: Some Lisp packages are useless without non-free software

Peter S Galbraith wrote:

> I disagree with this interpretation. I certainly didn't think of it
> that way when I packaged them.
>
> While matlab and maple are certainly non-free software, the elisp files
> don't support these software directly.

There are the autoloaded commands `matlab-shell' and `cmaple' to run
matlab and maple as subprocesses. Does that not mean direct support?
Count yourself lucky if RMS does not notice you promoting maple and
matlab. ;-)

> The elisp files are to help write scripts which can be under any
> license, including free ones.

My objection was that you still need the non-free third party software
to actually _run_ those scripts. :-(
Anyway, it seems that your point of view is generally accepted, as I found
three Emacs add-on packages in main which also help to write scripts
for non-free interpreters, namely inform-mode, lpc-mode and tads2-mode.

> I don't even have matlab in my system but can read .m files more
> easily with matlab-mode.

Okay, than matlab-mode is not so useless after all, I see.
Fortunately, you don't enforce that on other people by changing
auto-mode-alist.

> If you still disagree, I guess we can ask debian-devel or debian-policy.

While I would still prefer a different package for these files, I am
sufficiently convinced that it is no policy violation to leave them in
the main section. So I've downgraded the severity to "wishlist".

Kind Regards,

--
  Sven Joachim