As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of Melpa and its proprietor Steve Purcell. It’s an extraordinary resource run strictly as a public service. The site is not monetized and yet Purcell devotes huge amounts of time to running it. Melpa is an unofficial repository so some GNU purists may spurn it but as a practical matter it’s the most important and useful repository and it’s hard to imagine configuring Emacs without it.
Recently, Melpa passed 5,000 packages, everyone of which is curated and kept up to date. It’s a pretty significant achievement so I say again: if we can coax Purcell out of New Zealand and you’re lucky enough to meet him, be sure to buy him a beer. Until then, I can only say, Thanks and well done.