Hello all, I heard back from htmlize.el author Hrvoje Nikšić in his repo's issue thread[0].
So here's the summary: - Hrvoje Nikšić does not want to assign the copyright of htmlize to FSF. So it cannot be part of Emacs, Org mode or even GNU Elpa. - The package will keep living in its GitHub repo. 1. If user has issues with GitHub's non-free JS: - Download htmlize directly from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hniksic/emacs-htmlize/master/htmlize.el. 2. If user does not want to use htmlize, or want Org mode to suggest installing it from GitHub, set org-html-htmlize-output-type to nil. Note that the htmlize.el package by itself is GPLv2, so it is free. Does this settle the issue? [0]: https://github.com/hniksic/emacs-htmlize/issues/23
