[slime-devel] Re: Slime license annoyances

[Luke Gorrie]

Peter Van Eynde <pvaneynd at debian.org> writes:

> I contacted him and he is willing to allow xref to be distributed with
> slime, but is not willing to change the licence as he did for
> MK:DEFSYSTEM.
> 
> This is not 'free enough' for Debian so either we have to put slime into
> non-free or replace xref.lisp. Or a more able person could talk to him
> ;-).

I also emailed Mark and I just got the same response. He is happy with
the idea of our bundling xref.lisp but he hasn't released it in a way
that's suitable for Debian.

So we have three competing goals:

- Getting SLIME into debian proper.
- Preventing Debian & non-Debian SLIME from having different features.
- Making cross-referencing work out-of-the-box for CLISP users.

I rank them in the order listed and agree with Peter's suggestion that
we stop bundling xref.lisp and just leave hooks for it instead. I
don't like removing useful features but I'd like to see a full SLIME
in Debian for easy access by newbies.

Major objections?

Cheers,
Luke

P.S. Witness the invincible arm of Debian sending programs with
     awkward licenses hurtling into limbo! *WHOOSH*!