[gentoo-dev] License Checking

[gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

Hello all,

I've done a small patch which checks for licenses but have come across an 
issue while testing. Take the following:

xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"

What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even mention the 
above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) | LIC3"?

Most importantly, though, does portage already contain the code to parse these 
somewhere?

Regards,
Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

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On Sunday 23 November 2003 01:56, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> I've done a small patch which checks for licenses but have come across an
> issue while testing. Take the following:
>
> xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
> qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"
>
> What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even mention
> the above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) | LIC3"?
>
> Most importantly, though, does portage already contain the code to parse
> these somewhere?

Okay, I've assumed that | is the only modifier, that it means OR and that AND 
takes precedence. Attached is a very simple patch to emerge. You'll probably 
notice straight away that I've never really worked with python before.

I also ran it for emerge -ep world and ended up with this is my make.conf.

ACCEPT_LICENSES="GPL-2 Artistic MIT ZLIB BZIP2 as-is FLEX CRACKLIB LGPL-2 
LGPL-2.1 BSD fontconfig Info-ZIP X11 MSttfEULA PSF-2.2 NVIDIA freedist 
BAEKMUK Arphic free-noncomm sun-bcla-java-vm DB IPL-1 DIVX MOTIF XAnim 
public-domain FDL-1.1 wxWinLL-3 OpenSoftware"

There is also no checking of * or -, but I'm guessing that's already 
abstracted in portage. Or does it only apply to USE? Anyway, will check on 
that later. Should try to get at least some sleep before the new work day.

BTW, at what time should I post this to bugzilla?

Regards,
Jason

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--- emerge.orig	2003-11-03 00:25:09.000000000 +0900
+++ emerge.new	2003-11-23 02:42:53.978695912 +0900
@@ -1911,7 +1911,7 @@
 		myvars=['GENTOO_MIRRORS', 'CONFIG_PROTECT', 'CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK',
 				'PORTDIR', 'DISTDIR', 'PKGDIR', 'PORTAGE_TMPDIR', 'PORTDIR_OVERLAY',
 				'USE', 'COMPILER', 'CHOST', 'CFLAGS', 'CXXFLAGS','ACCEPT_KEYWORDS', 
-				'MAKEOPTS', 'AUTOCLEAN', 'SYNC', 'FEATURES']
+				'MAKEOPTS', 'AUTOCLEAN', 'SYNC', 'FEATURES', 'ACCEPT_LICENSES']
 	myvars.sort()
 	for x in myvars:
 		print x+'="'+portage.settings[x]+'"'
@@ -2120,6 +2120,28 @@
 			if ("--usepkgonly" in myopts) and mydepgraph.missingbins:
 				sys.stderr.write(red("The following binaries are not available for merging...\n"))
 
+		accept_licenses = string.split(portage.settings['ACCEPT_LICENSES'])
+		print accept_licenses 
+		all_licenses_accepted = 1
+		for pkg in mydepgraph.altlist():
+			pkg_licenses = portage.portdb.aux_get(pkg[2], ["LICENSE"])[0]
+			for license_group in string.split(pkg_licenses,"|"):
+				license_accepted = 1
+				for license in string.split(license_group):
+					try:
+						temp = accept_licenses.index(license)
+					except Exception,e:
+						license_accepted = 0
+				if license_accepted == 1:
+					break
+			if license_accepted == 0:
+				print "\n!!! License(s) " + string.replace(pkg_licenses, "|", "or") + " required by " + pkg[2]
+				print "!!! has not been accepted. Please review and add to ACCEPT_LICENSES."
+				all_licenses_accepted = 0
+		if all_licenses_accepted == 0:
+			print
+			sys.exit(1)
+			
 		if mydepgraph.missingbins:
 			for x in mydepgraph.missingbins:
 				sys.stderr.write("   "+str(x)+"\n")


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Aron Griffis]

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Jason Stubbs wrote:	[Sat Nov 22 2003, 12:49:31PM EST]
> Okay, I've assumed that | is the only modifier, that it means OR and
> that AND takes precedence. Attached is a very simple patch to emerge.
> You'll probably notice straight away that I've never really worked
> with python before.

What do you mean by OR vs. AND when referring to package licenses?  What
is the semantic difference between the following?

    LICENSE="GPL-1 GPL-2"
    LICENSE="GPL-1 | GPL-2"

This is actually a loaded question.  I suspect there isn't a consistent
practice in the tree.  The problem is that some packages are released
under more than one license, whereas some packages contain multiple
pieces of software, each of which is released under a different license.

Take the app-vim/colorschemes package, for example.  It is a
conglomeration of all the colorschemes found on vim.sf.net, so it
contains software released under different licenses.  Presently the
package has

    LICENSE="vim | GPL-2 | public-domain"

If this is wrong, I take complete responsibility...  It's what I told
Ciaran to use.  But the question is: Does this fit your definition of
OR vs. AND, and do other packages in the tree use the same definition?

> BTW, at what time should I post this to bugzilla?

Pretty soon.  I'd say just as soon as we figure out this part.

Aron

-- 
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer (alpha / ia64 / ruby / vim)
Key fingerprint = E3B6 8734 C2D6 B5E5 AE76  FB3A 26B1 C5E3 2010 4EB0


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:24:50 -0500
Aron Griffis <agriffis@gentoo.org> wrote:


> 
> Take the app-vim/colorschemes package, for example.  It is a
> conglomeration of all the colorschemes found on vim.sf.net, so it
> contains software released under different licenses.  Presently the
> package has
> 
>     LICENSE="vim | GPL-2 | public-domain"
> 
> If this is wrong, I take complete responsibility...  It's what I told
> Ciaran to use.  But the question is: Does this fit your definition of
> OR vs. AND, and do other packages in the tree use the same definition?

I think this is the case where you need to agree to -all- those
licenses in order to install a package, ergo it is "AND" and should be
"vim GPL-2 public-domain"  in order to not be avoiding a warranty.

in a case where you can choose to accept either the MPL or the GPL for
example, the license should be 
LICENSE="GPL | MPL" 

And if its for example either released as FPL  (Foo package License ) or
GPL+ LGPL parts, it should be :
LICENSE="FPL | (GPL LGPL)" 


This is the logic that "makes sense" for me.  in a case where its
multiple licensed, you have to agree to all such licenses, or it won't
match.


//Spider

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See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Mike Frysinger]

On Saturday 22 November 2003 11:56, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
> qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"
>
> What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even mention
> the above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) | LIC3"?

there has been no real position on how to declare multiple licenses ... thus 
devs have just done whatever ...
some may say | means one thing, some may say it means another, the truth is, 
it has never officially been declared thus it really means nothing when 
looking at the portage tree as a whole

> Most importantly, though, does portage already contain the code to parse
> these somewhere?

no
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17367
-mike



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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Aron Griffis]

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Spider wrote:	[Sat Nov 22 2003, 04:43:10PM EST]
> in a case where you can choose to accept either the MPL or the GPL for
> example, the license should be 
> LICENSE="GPL | MPL" 
> 
> And if its for example either released as FPL  (Foo package License ) or
> GPL+ LGPL parts, it should be :
> LICENSE="FPL | (GPL LGPL)" 
> 
> This is the logic that "makes sense" for me.  in a case where its
> multiple licensed, you have to agree to all such licenses, or it won't
> match.

This is fine with me, and I can go ahead and fix the colorschemes
package.  I guess this would necessitate a rev bump if ACCEPT_LICENSES
were implemented so that users would be properly informed, but since
ACCEPT_LICENSES isn't implemented yet, I won't bump the rev.

I suppose that other packages can be fixed as we go along, but this
information needs to be added to the developer's guide / ebuild-writing
guide / skel.ebuild.  Swift?

Before we go any further, does this warrant a GLEP or can we implement
as a bug-fix to 17367?  It seems to me that all voices have been
supportive so far, even if there are different opinions (/me waves to
Matt Kennedy) regarding free/non-free software in Gentoo.

Aron

-- 
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer (alpha / ia64 / ruby / vim)
Key fingerprint = E3B6 8734 C2D6 B5E5 AE76  FB3A 26B1 C5E3 2010 4EB0


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Sunday 23 November 2003 07:43, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Saturday 22 November 2003 11:56, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> > xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
> > qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"
> >
> > What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even mention
> > the above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) | LIC3"?
>
> there has been no real position on how to declare multiple licenses ...
> thus devs have just done whatever ...
> some may say | means one thing, some may say it means another, the truth
> is, it has never officially been declared thus it really means nothing when
> looking at the portage tree as a whole

Created new bug #34146

> > Most importantly, though, does portage already contain the code to parse
> > these somewhere?
>
> no
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17367

Submitted patch and made it depend on 34146

Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Sunday 23 November 2003 10:59, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> On Sunday 23 November 2003 07:43, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Saturday 22 November 2003 11:56, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> > > xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
> > > qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"
> > >
> > > What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even
> > > mention the above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) |
> > > LIC3"?
> >
> > there has been no real position on how to declare multiple licenses ...
> > thus devs have just done whatever ...
> > some may say | means one thing, some may say it means another, the truth
> > is, it has never officially been declared thus it really means nothing
> > when looking at the portage tree as a whole
>
> Created new bug #34146

As a side note, I found a couple of ebuilds that are a bit of a concern.

app-emulation/point2play
LICENSE="Aladdin" # not sure about that .. comments?

dev-python/python-ldap
dev-python/python-ldap-py21
LICENSE="public-domain" #NOTE: win32 section is under questionable license

Created a bug for these too. #34147

Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Sunday 23 November 2003 10:59, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> On Sunday 23 November 2003 07:43, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Saturday 22 November 2003 11:56, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> > > xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
> > > qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"
> > >
> > > What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even
> > > mention the above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) |
> > > LIC3"?
> >
> > there has been no real position on how to declare multiple licenses ...
> > thus devs have just done whatever ...
> > some may say | means one thing, some may say it means another, the truth
> > is, it has never officially been declared thus it really means nothing
> > when looking at the portage tree as a whole
>
> Created new bug #34146

I hate it when bugs are dismissed and marked as invalid without any research 
or questioning.

Slightly disgruntled,
Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 05:52:05PM -0500, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I suppose that other packages can be fixed as we go along, but this
> information needs to be added to the developer's guide / ebuild-writing
> guide / skel.ebuild.  Swift?

Sure, I can go as far as the ebuild-writing guide. Skel.ebuild is out of my
reach though.
 
Wkr,
	Sven Vermeulen

-- 
 ^__^   And Larry saw that it was Good.
 (oo)                                      Sven Vermeulen
 (__)   http://www.gentoo.org              Gentoo Documentation Project

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Marius Mauch]

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On 11/23/03  Jason Stubbs wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I've done a small patch which checks for licenses but have come across
> an issue while testing. Take the following:
> 
> xfree contains LICENSE="X11 MSttfEULA"
> qt contains LICENSE="QPL-1.0 | GPL-2"
> 
> What other lexical forms are there? The ebuild howto doesn't even
> mention the above construct. Will I find something like "(LIC1 LIC2) |
> LIC3"?
> 
> Most importantly, though, does portage already contain the code to
> parse these somewhere?

So before we can go ahead and implement this the following points have
to be cleared:
- formal syntax and semantic of the LICENSE variable
- What should be the default for ACCEPT_LICENSES, this is probably a
point for the managers meeting
- How should portage handle packages with unaccepted licenses

Marius

-- 
Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be
Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Aron Griffis]

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Marius Mauch wrote:	[Sun Nov 23 2003, 01:01:14PM EST]
> So before we can go ahead and implement this the following points have
> to be cleared:
> - formal syntax and semantic of the LICENSE variable

Already decided earlier in this thread and summarized at

    http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34146#c3

Just don't look too hard for the "original LICENSE= proposal" since it
was on gentoo-core not gentoo-dev

> - What should be the default for ACCEPT_LICENSES, this is probably a
> point for the managers meeting

Right.  Also there may be a need for meta-licenses from the outset,
though we haven't discussed how to implement them.

> - How should portage handle packages with unaccepted licenses

This one is easy.  To maintain the non-interactive nature of emerge, it
should simply die with an error message that informs the user of the
problem, what to go read, and how to re-run the emerge so that it will
work (for example ACCEPT_LICENSES='vim' emerge --resume)

Anything else breaks emerge's non-interactive nature, though I'm
probably treading on thin ice here, since I'm pretty sure that the games
stuff already uses some sort of interactive license checking (wouldn't
know... I'm not a gamer)

Aron

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Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer (alpha / ia64 / ruby / vim)
Key fingerprint = E3B6 8734 C2D6 B5E5 AE76  FB3A 26B1 C5E3 2010 4EB0


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Aron Griffis]

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Aron Griffis wrote:	[Sun Nov 23 2003, 06:47:15PM EST]
> > - How should portage handle packages with unaccepted licenses
> 
> This one is easy.  To maintain the non-interactive nature of emerge, it
> should simply die with an error message that informs the user of the
> problem, what to go read, and how to re-run the emerge so that it will
> work (for example ACCEPT_LICENSES='vim' emerge --resume)

Also, as Spanky mentioned earlier, license checking should happen
immediately when starting the emerge, instead of waiting for the
particular package.

-- 
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer (alpha / ia64 / ruby / vim)
Key fingerprint = E3B6 8734 C2D6 B5E5 AE76  FB3A 26B1 C5E3 2010 4EB0


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On Sun, 2003-11-23 at 18:54, Aron Griffis wrote:
> Aron Griffis wrote:	[Sun Nov 23 2003, 06:47:15PM EST]
> > > - How should portage handle packages with unaccepted licenses
> > 
> > This one is easy.  To maintain the non-interactive nature of emerge, it
> > should simply die with an error message that informs the user of the
> > problem, what to go read, and how to re-run the emerge so that it will
> > work (for example ACCEPT_LICENSES='vim' emerge --resume)
> 
> Also, as Spanky mentioned earlier, license checking should happen
> immediately when starting the emerge, instead of waiting for the
> particular package.

We should probably add another letter to the output of emerge --pretend,
perhaps an L for License.

Example:
[ebuild   RFL  ] games-fps/savagedemo-0

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Monday 24 November 2003 08:47, Aron Griffis wrote:
> Anything else breaks emerge's non-interactive nature, though I'm
> probably treading on thin ice here, since I'm pretty sure that the games
> stuff already uses some sort of interactive license checking (wouldn't
> know... I'm not a gamer)

I checked on that. The ebuilds use a new function in eutils that checks if the 
specified license is in ACCEPT_LICENSES and outputs the license file to the 
console if it (yes, it only supports one license) does not. After outputting 
the license file, it asks for user acceptance and continues emerging if 
accepted.

If the functionality is moved to portage then the ebuilds that use this 
function will not break even if no changes are made to them.

Regards,
Jason


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sun, 2003-11-23 at 18:47, Aron Griffis wrote:
> Marius Mauch wrote:	[Sun Nov 23 2003, 01:01:14PM EST]
> > So before we can go ahead and implement this the following points have
> > to be cleared:
> > - formal syntax and semantic of the LICENSE variable
> 
> Already decided earlier in this thread and summarized at
> 
>     http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34146#c3
> 
> Just don't look too hard for the "original LICENSE= proposal" since it
> was on gentoo-core not gentoo-dev
> 
> > - What should be the default for ACCEPT_LICENSES, this is probably a
> > point for the managers meeting
> 
> Right.  Also there may be a need for meta-licenses from the outset,
> though we haven't discussed how to implement them.
> 
> > - How should portage handle packages with unaccepted licenses
> 
> This one is easy.  To maintain the non-interactive nature of emerge, it
> should simply die with an error message that informs the user of the
> problem, what to go read, and how to re-run the emerge so that it will
> work (for example ACCEPT_LICENSES='vim' emerge --resume)
> 
> Anything else breaks emerge's non-interactive nature, though I'm
> probably treading on thin ice here, since I'm pretty sure that the games
> stuff already uses some sort of interactive license checking (wouldn't
> know... I'm not a gamer)

Our ebuilds are ONLY interactive if the license for the game is NOT in
ACCEPT_LICENSES.  At the moment, we're simply doing in our ebuilds what
we believe portage should do itself.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

Is your power animal a penguin?

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sun, 2003-11-23 at 19:42, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-11-23 at 18:54, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Aron Griffis wrote:	[Sun Nov 23 2003, 06:47:15PM EST]
> > > > - How should portage handle packages with unaccepted licenses
> > > 
> > > This one is easy.  To maintain the non-interactive nature of emerge, it
> > > should simply die with an error message that informs the user of the
> > > problem, what to go read, and how to re-run the emerge so that it will
> > > work (for example ACCEPT_LICENSES='vim' emerge --resume)
> > 
> > Also, as Spanky mentioned earlier, license checking should happen
> > immediately when starting the emerge, instead of waiting for the
> > particular package.
> 
> We should probably add another letter to the output of emerge --pretend,
> perhaps an L for License.
> 
> Example:
> [ebuild   RFL  ] games-fps/savagedemo-0

I would be all for that.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

Is your power animal a penguin?

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

Replying to my own messages feels very strange... but anyway

On Sunday 23 November 2003 02:49, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> There is also no checking of * or -, but I'm guessing that's already
> abstracted in portage. Or does it only apply to USE? Anyway, will check on
> that later.

Just looking at the code for USE and found that it doesn't implement * either, 
only -*. Thinking about how to implement * with the licenses, I can 
understand why. Is * necessary? Mightn't it be legally dangerous for the 
end-user?

Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Georgi Georgiev]

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On 23/11/2003 at 19:42:45(-0500), Donnie Berkholz used 1.2K to say:
> We should probably add another letter to the output of emerge --pretend,
> perhaps an L for License.
> 
> Example:
> [ebuild   RFL  ] games-fps/savagedemo-0

Maybe also modify the output of emerge --pretend --verbose in case the user
wants to know what license they have to put in ACCEPT_LICENSES, similar to the
way they now can see what USE flag they need to modify in order to change some
behaviour.

-- 
 /   Georgi Georgiev    / The disks are getting full; purge a file      /
\     chutz@gg3.net    \  today.                                       \
 /  +81(90)6266-1163    /                                               /

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Christian Birchinger]

You don't have to make "*" standard. It will be the users fault
if he uses "*". But please provide that that feature. Don't make
me write a script which automaticaly adds all new license to my
make.conf. The amount of licenses tells that there are licenses
added alot. This requires to edit make.conf alot if you can't
use "*". I understand that you don't want it by default. But
please offer the functionality because i really don't want to
edit make.conf after new licenses get added or some changed.

On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 10:14:31PM +0900, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> Replying to my own messages feels very strange... but anyway
> 
> On Sunday 23 November 2003 02:49, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> > There is also no checking of * or -, but I'm guessing that's already
> > abstracted in portage. Or does it only apply to USE? Anyway, will check on
> > that later.
> 
> Just looking at the code for USE and found that it doesn't implement * either, 
> only -*. Thinking about how to implement * with the licenses, I can 
> understand why. Is * necessary? Mightn't it be legally dangerous for the 
> end-user?

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Monday 24 November 2003 09:42, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-11-23 at 18:54, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Aron Griffis wrote:	[Sun Nov 23 2003, 06:47:15PM EST]
> > Also, as Spanky mentioned earlier, license checking should happen
> > immediately when starting the emerge, instead of waiting for the
> > particular package.
>
> We should probably add another letter to the output of emerge --pretend,
> perhaps an L for License.
>
> Example:
> [ebuild   RFL  ] games-fps/savagedemo-0

Presently, my patch will give an output in red of:
[license       ] games-fps/savagedemo-0 (SAVAGE)

I've done it the same way as "blocks" and the license details are outputed 
regardless of the --verbose option but unfortunately "license" has one letter 
too many. Also, deps aren't checked for the unlicensed package so USE flags 
are unnecessary at the moment, but this is something I'm working on fixing.

Regards,
Jason

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 01:53:49PM +0900, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> I've done it the same way as "blocks" and the license details are outputed 
> regardless of the --verbose option but unfortunately "license" has one letter 
> too many. 

Try "lawyer" :)

	Sven Vermeulen

-- 
 ^__^   And Larry saw that it was Good.
 (oo)                                      Sven Vermeulen
 (__)   http://www.gentoo.org              Gentoo Documentation Project

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Wednesday 26 November 2003 23:34, Christian Birchinger wrote:
> You don't have to make "*" standard. It will be the users fault
> if he uses "*". But please provide that that feature. Don't make
> me write a script which automaticaly adds all new license to my
> make.conf. The amount of licenses tells that there are licenses
> added alot. This requires to edit make.conf alot if you can't
> use "*". I understand that you don't want it by default. But
> please offer the functionality because i really don't want to
> edit make.conf after new licenses get added or some changed.
>

I am personally of the stance that we should by default have something 
like
ACCEPT_LICENSES="osi-approved nonfree"

Where the nonfree alias includes all licenses that are now accepted by 
default (So everything but those licenses that explicitly need to be 
enabled). I don't think that a * can be provided for those that need 
explicit confirmation as it would defeat the idea of explicit 
confirmation.

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

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On Thursday 27 November 2003 03:54 pm, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> I am personally of the stance that we should by default have something
> like
> ACCEPT_LICENSES="osi-approved nonfree"
This is a bad default, as many users will *not* accept non-free licenses. I 
still think the best default (if we need a default at all) would be the 
minimal required for a stage3.
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Wever]

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On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 16:04:34 +0000
Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> wrote:

> This is a bad default, as many users will *not* accept non-free
> licenses. I still think the best default (if we need a default at all)
> would be the minimal required for a stage3.

Can we get some statistical data on this?  I hear people swear both ways
that either "more people use only free software" or "more people use any
licensed" software.  

My $0.02 is that if this gets implemented, it should be put in so that the
default behavior is like portage is now, and if you choose to restrict
yourself to only free software or other licensing scheme, you can make the
necessary changes yourself.  Otherwise you will have a ton of users asking
"why can't i emerge package foo?", or filing bugs because of this, etc.  
>From a support perspective, if this gets implemented, I'm forwarding all
of these questions, bugs, etc to the "free and only free" software folks.

Please dont' take away one "freedom" for another.

Cheers,
-- 
Jason Wever
Gentoo/Sparc Team Co-Lead

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

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On Thursday 27 November 2003 04:12 pm, Jason Wever wrote:
> My $0.02 is that if this gets implemented, it should be put in so that the
> default behavior is like portage is now, 
Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses, its 
legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?)
> and if you choose to restrict 
> yourself to only free software or other licensing scheme, you can make the
> necessary changes yourself.  Otherwise you will have a ton of users asking 
> "why can't i emerge package foo?", or filing bugs because of this, etc.  
If Portage displays a clear enough message, there shouldn't be a problem with 
this...
>
>From a support perspective, if this gets implemented, I'm forwarding all
> of these questions, bugs, etc to the "free and only free" software folks.
> Please dont' take away one "freedom" for another.
As long as there is an option (editing the ACCEPT_LICENSES), there is no 
freedom being removed.
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Toby Dickenson]

On Thursday 27 November 2003 16:19, Luke-Jr wrote:

> > Can we get some statistical data on this? 
> Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses, its 
> legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?) 

If you want a hand count, I do want to use non-free software, and I do want to 
read every non-free license before installing something.

> > and if you choose to restrict
> > yourself to only free software or other licensing scheme, you can make
> > the necessary changes yourself.  Otherwise you will have a ton of users
> > asking "why can't i emerge package foo?", or filing bugs because of this,
> > etc.
>
> If Portage displays a clear enough message, there shouldn't be a problem
> with this...

We could further reduce the effort needed by having a switch to portage to get 
it to interactively prompt the user to accept any outstanding licenses, and 
allow portage to update ACCEPT_LICENSES in the same way it updates the world 
file.

-- 
Toby Dickenson


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Wever]

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On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 16:19:04 +0000
Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> wrote:

> > My $0.02 is that if this gets implemented, it should be put in so that
> > the default behavior is like portage is now, 
> Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses,
> its legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?)

Then if we have vendors who say "you absolutely must interactively accept
our license agreement before using" or something similar, then we'd have
no choice but to limit those licenses in this feature.  

And then there's the argument about whether this should be done for all
licenses, but I don't want to start up a subthread.

> > and if you choose to restrict 
> > yourself to only free software or other licensing scheme, you can make
> > the necessary changes yourself.  Otherwise you will have a ton of
> > users asking "why can't i emerge package foo?", or filing bugs because
> > of this, etc.  
> If Portage displays a clear enough message, there shouldn't be a problem
> with this...

Perhaps, if it's not prone to get lost in the shuffle like einfo's can. 
However, now I don't have to go through and set my make.conf to say
"let me use everything", or "let me use just software of license foo". 
Maybe I'm just being stubborn, but I'd rather not have to set extra
options that I don't currently have to, unless it's a situation like the
case above"

> >
> >From a support perspective, if this gets implemented, I'm forwarding
> >all
> > of these questions, bugs, etc to the "free and only free" software
> > folks. Please dont' take away one "freedom" for another.
> As long as there is an option (editing the ACCEPT_LICENSES), there is no
> 
> freedom being removed.

So I guess it's a matter of opt in (only free licenses by default) vs out
out (every license by default) depending on your perspective.  I'd like to
suggest that something like a forum poll be used to gauge which is the
majority opinion, and go with that (if legality issues don't overrule
this).

-- 
Jason Wever
Gentoo/Sparc Team Co-Lead

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Friday 28 November 2003 01:19, Luke-Jr wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Thursday 27 November 2003 04:12 pm, Jason Wever wrote:
> > My $0.02 is that if this gets implemented, it should be put in so that
> > the default behavior is like portage is now,
>
> Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses, its
> legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?)

My main concern from this perspective is whether "*" should be available at 
all.

> > and if you choose to restrict
> > yourself to only free software or other licensing scheme, you can make
> > the necessary changes yourself.  Otherwise you will have a ton of users
> > asking "why can't i emerge package foo?", or filing bugs because of this,
> > etc.
>
> If Portage displays a clear enough message, there shouldn't be a problem
> with this...

This shouldn't be a problem as long as users get a *loud* advance warning. Not 
only should it be in pkg_postinst but maybe also in the GWN?

> From a support perspective, if this gets implemented, I'm forwarding all
>
> > of these questions, bugs, etc to the "free and only free" software folks.
> > Please dont' take away one "freedom" for another.
>
> As long as there is an option (editing the ACCEPT_LICENSES), there is no
> freedom being removed.

I think the osf/fsf licenses are the best default. From what I've seen working 
on a licensing patch, most of the base system is covered by a handful of 
licenses. I have 352 packages installed on my system and my ACCEPT_LICENCE is 
as follows:
ACCEPT_LICENSE="Artistic MIT ZLIB BZIP2 FLEX CRACKLIB LGPL-2 NVIDIA LGPL-2.1
BSD fontconfig Info-ZIP X11 MSttfEULA PSF-2.2 freedist BAEKMUK Arphic
free-noncomm sun-bcla-java-vm DB IPL-1 DIVX MOTIF XAnim public-domain FDL-1.1
wxWinLL-3 OpenSoftware as-is GPL-2"

There's 31 licenses there. Installing all of gnome only requires PYTHON for 
pyxml MPL-1.1 and NPL-1.1 for mozilla and Ximian-logos for bug-buddy. I 
haven't looked into the licenses themselves so I don't know what would be 
"free" and "non-free" but it's definately not the maintenance nightmare 
people are worried about.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Christian Birchinger]

I don't need "*" as long as you offer a
"everything-except-stuff-which-requires-explicit-license-accepting-by-the-user"-alias

Or in other words, like the situation is now.


On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 01:55:45AM +0900, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> On Friday 28 November 2003 01:19, Luke-Jr wrote:
> >
> > Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses, its
> > legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?)
> 
> My main concern from this perspective is whether "*" should be available at 
> all.
> 

--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Friday 28 November 2003 02:17, Christian Birchinger wrote:
> I don't need "*" as long as you offer a
> "everything-except-stuff-which-requires-explicit-license-accepting-by-the-u
>ser"-alias

Or in other words, "non-clickwrap". I don't see anything wrong with this, 
either. The problem is that we need a way to proactively decide what does and 
does not require a click. The idsoftware issue could have been much worse if 
they hadn't first communicated their dislike of the situation.

Regards,
Jason

--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Chris Bainbridge]

On Thursday 27 November 2003 16:38, Jason Wever wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 16:19:04 +0000
>
> Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > My $0.02 is that if this gets implemented, it should be put in so that
> > > the default behavior is like portage is now,
> >
> > Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses,
> > its legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?)
>
> Then if we have vendors who say "you absolutely must interactively accept
> our license agreement before using" or something similar, then we'd have
> no choice but to limit those licenses in this feature.

Just to chip in my 2p to the thread that refuses to die. Why does the system 
administrator have to agree to any license before installing software? He is 
quite a separate person from the user and copyright law, and licenses like 
the GPL, only cover redistribution, not installation, so he need not concern 
himself with those either. Surely if programs have user restrictions then it 
is the responsibility of the program to display a clip wrap license for each 
individual user, otherwise how would they be aware one exists?


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

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Hash: SHA1

> Just to chip in my 2p to the thread that refuses to die. Why does the
> system \r administrator have to agree to any license before installing
> software? He is quite a separate person from the user and copyright law,
> and licenses like the GPL, only cover redistribution, not installation, so
> he need not concern himself with those either. Surely if programs have user
> restrictions then it is the responsibility of the program to display a clip
> wrap license for each individual user, otherwise how would they be aware
> one exists?
Other licenses (which I personally would probably never accept) may cover 
installation.
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Brett I. Holcomb]

But many others would and do accept them.  You want us to jump through hoops 
to maintain what we have now so you don't have to. 

On Thursday 27 November 2003 14:50, you wrote:
> > Just to chip in my 2p to the thread that refuses to die. Why does the
> > system \r administrator have to agree to any license before installing
> > software? He is quite a separate person from the user and copyright law,
> > and licenses like the GPL, only cover redistribution, not installation,
> > so he need not concern himself with those either. Surely if programs have
> > user restrictions then it is the responsibility of the program to display
> > a clip wrap license for each individual user, otherwise how would they be
> > aware one exists?
>
> Other licenses (which I personally would probably never accept) may cover
> installation.

--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jon Portnoy]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 04:04:34PM +0000, Luke-Jr wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thursday 27 November 2003 03:54 pm, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> > I am personally of the stance that we should by default have something
> > like
> > ACCEPT_LICENSES="osi-approved nonfree"
> This is a bad default, as many users will *not* accept non-free licenses. I 
> still think the best default (if we need a default at all) would be the 
> minimal required for a stage3.

Whereas a _majority_ of users will want nonfree. And the point of 
defaults is to cater to the majority, is it not?

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jon Portnoy]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 04:19:04PM +0000, Luke-Jr wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thursday 27 November 2003 04:12 pm, Jason Wever wrote:
> > My $0.02 is that if this gets implemented, it should be put in so that the
> > default behavior is like portage is now, 
> Since Portage as it is right now doesn't pay any attention to licenses, its 
> legality could be questioned (as with the games issue before?)

I explained this to you the other day.
In addition to what I said at the time: installing software, using 
software, and redistributing software are all very different animals.

[snip]
> >From a support perspective, if this gets implemented, I'm forwarding all
> > of these questions, bugs, etc to the "free and only free" software folks.
> > Please dont' take away one "freedom" for another.
> As long as there is an option (editing the ACCEPT_LICENSES), there is no 
> freedom being removed.

Indeed. Now we're discussing convienence.

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

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Hash: SHA1

On Friday 28 November 2003 12:22 am, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> Whereas a _majority_ of users will want nonfree. And the point of 
> defaults is to cater to the majority, is it not?
However, *all* users *must* accept the 14-or-so minimal licenses for a Gentoo 
system. Last I checked, the USE defaults cater to what is in most cases 
required, not what is usually desired (in which case, I think about 80-90% of 
the USE flags should probably be listed).
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

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On Friday 28 November 2003 12:26 am, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> In addition to what I said at the time: installing software, using 
> software, and redistributing software are all very different animals.
And some licenses cover installation also.

> > As long as there is an option (editing the ACCEPT_LICENSES), there is no
> > \r freedom being removed.
> Indeed. Now we're discussing convienence.
And if there's aliases for all free software and any license, there's hardly 
much to do... I don't have a problem editing my make.conf to include all the 
other free licenses in addition to the minimal ones. It would take a minute 
at most.
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Friday 28 November 2003 12:20 am, Brett I. Holcomb wrote:
> But many others would and do accept them.  You want us to jump through
> hoops to maintain what we have now so you don't have to.
Adding a single line to make.conf is hardly jumping through hoops, especially 
considering that people should consider changes to make.conf when upgrading 
Portage anyway...
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Chris Bainbridge]

On Thursday 27 November 2003 19:50, Luke-Jr wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> > Just to chip in my 2p to the thread that refuses to die. Why does the
> > system  administrator have to agree to any license before installing
> > software? He is quite a separate person from the user and copyright law,
> > and licenses like the GPL, only cover redistribution, not installation,
> > so he need not concern himself with those either. Surely if programs have
> > user restrictions then it is the responsibility of the program to display
> > a clip wrap license for each individual user, otherwise how would they be
> > aware one exists?
>
> Other licenses (which I personally would probably never accept) may cover
> installation.

In that case, there should be a (hopefully short) list of those licenses, and 
only those licenses should be covered by the license-install-accept variable 
in make.conf. It is not possible, or legal, for the system administrator to 
accept licenses governing usage or redistribution on behalf of other users.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Philippe Coulonges]

Le Fri, 28 Nov 2003 03:35:27 +0000
Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> écrivait :

> And if there's aliases for all free software and any license, there's
> hardly much to do... I don't have a problem editing my make.conf to
> include all the other free licenses in addition to the minimal ones.
> It would take a minute at most.

Humm, not so sure.
ls /usr/portage/licenses | wc -l
    301

I think we need some categories, so each user can choose from predefined
sets.
I propose : FSF_APPROVED_GPL_COMPAT, FSF_APPROVED_NOT_GPL_COMPAT,
OSI_APPROVED, GENTOO_APPROVED_FREE_SOFTWARE, NON_FREE,
NON_FREE_ASK_INTERACTIVE

I started to fill the first 2.

FSF_APPROVED_GPL_COMPAT="LGPL-2.1 LGPL-2 GPL-1 GPL-2 BSD MIT X11 as-is
public-domain ZLIB W3C Sleepycat OPENLDAP PYTHON Clarified-Artistic
Artistic-2 ZPL vim"

FSF_APPROVED_NOT_GPL_COMPAT="Academic OpenSoftware Apache-1.1 IPL
CPL-1.0 MPL SPL NPL-1 SISSL QPL-1.0 FTL PHP PLAN9 Apple"

The FSF_APPROVED_NOT_GPL_COMPAT certainly needs some further check, as
(for example) I'm confused by the many Sun's licenses.

I noticed that IBM and IPL licenses seems to be the same (name and
version). I used IPL as for searching with my tools, IBM confuse with
IBM-ILNWP, a clearly non-free license.

With these variables, I also checked all the ebuilds.
Out of 11932 ebuild, 9584 are GPL_COMPAT, roughly 80%
234 are GPL_INCOMPAT, that makes 9% of the remaining ebuilds.

That lets 2114 ebuilds and 266 licences we still have to check. Does
someone wants to continue the minute check ?

CU
CPHIL
-- 
This software said it requires Win95 or better, so I installed Linux.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[brett holcomb]

I guess my concern is that Gentoo has struck an excellent 
balance between keeping the free software philosophy and 
making a distro that is usuable for cases when commerical 
or non-free software has to be used.  Now we have people 
who want to Debianize Gentoo by at least forcing us to do 
things to use "immoral licenses".  If all the free 
software people are so hot to worry about pure systems 
then let them be the ones who have to do the work - don't 
force it on us.  If that's not acceptable then use Debian. 
 

Having served my time as a windows 
Admin/user/maintainer/etc I am a strong supporter of free 
software but this inane insistance on creating a "pure 
distro free from immoral licenses" is going to kill the 
acceptance of Linux. People who have to make things work 
aren't going to put up with it and will  scratch distros 
like that off the list of considerations.  Do that to 
Gentoo and a lot of users will find another distro.

So assume we make it so the rest of us have to do the work 
to make Gentoo usable - will it stop with just having to 
modify /etc/make.conf or once that is achieved what's next 
- eliminate packages that are "immorally licensed" but are 
necessary to make Gentoo usable because we don't believe 
in the licenses .  It appears choice is good except when 
it doesn't agree with a political philosophy.

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 03:40:15 +0000
  Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>On Friday 28 November 2003 12:20 am, Brett I. Holcomb 
>wrote:
>> But many others would and do accept them.  You want us 
>>to jump through
>> hoops to maintain what we have now so you don't have to.
>Adding a single line to make.conf is hardly jumping 
>through hoops, especially 
>considering that people should consider changes to 
>make.conf when upgrading 
>Portage anyway...
>- -- 
>Luke-Jr
>Developer, Gentoo Linux
>http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Friday 28 November 2003 22:00, brett holcomb wrote:
> So assume we make it so the rest of us have to do the work
> to make Gentoo usable - will it stop with just having to
> modify /etc/make.conf or once that is achieved what's next
> - eliminate packages that are "immorally licensed" but are
> necessary to make Gentoo usable because we don't believe
> in the licenses .  It appears choice is good except when
> it doesn't agree with a political philosophy.

What are you so angry about? No one is talking about making it difficult for 
users to use "non-free" software. We're just trying to make it easy for the 
average user to protect him/herself legally. I haven't heard much of a 
mention of morals for a while. Most of the talk has just been about what 
would be the best defaults - BUT whatever is decided for the defaults it 
definately wont be difficult to change.

And what's with your concern about removing "immorally licensed" packages from 
portage? Only one person mentioned that and was even shot down by people that 
don't use "immorally licensed" software.

Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

Please never ever reply to me off list.

On Friday 28 November 2003 22:57, brett holcomb wrote:
> Because I've finally found a distro that works. I've
> watched Unix mess up the desktop, been condemmed to use
> Windows for years, used Linux and suffered the RPM mess.
>  I finally found Gentoo which is an almost perfect distro.
>  It provides a large number of packages, is easy to
> install, maintain, and upgrade and allows us choice in
> what we want to run. And then people want to Debianize
> Gentoo.  Yes, they still do - that's not dead by any
> means.  It shows in some of the comments and in the
> attitude of which "immoral licenses" was one I've received
> in this thread.  It's an attitude that anyone who uses
> non-free isn't worth consideration so let a third party
> fill in the gaps or they can go elsewhere. Well, we can't.
>  The free only can always go to Debian - we only can go
> back to RPM distros!  It appears choice is good as long
> it's free-only.

While some people may have that attitude it never makes its way into anything 
that is released with Gentoo. Do you think this sort of debate has never came 
up before?

>   I have no problem with adding license handling being
> modified so that all of us can build systems as we desire
> and that allow us to do our jobs.  I do have a problem
> with Gentoo being changed so that we who use non-free
> software have to make the changes - why should we.   If
> someone is that hot to have it change let them make the
> changes to their make.conf or whatever file.  Yes, even
> having to do that change may be a small item but the
> camel's nose appeared small when he first shoved it under
> the tent.   I've said more than I should so I'll just
> watch and see what happens.

Most new Linux users assume that everything associated with Linux is free. The 
only reason I can see to have a default of "free-only" licenses is to make 
sure those users are aware of the agreement under which they're using the 
software. As well as that, many users who use "non-free" software (myself 
included) are interested in the terms under which they are using it. Your 
opinion doesn't sound so much like the free vs. non-free; it sounds like 
those who care about licensing vs. those who don't.

The addition of licensing to Gentoo is in no way related to the free vs. 
non-free debate; only the defaults is. When the defaults are decided it won't 
be by a vote on free vs. non-free; it will be decided with valid reasoning as 
in the above. Until there is (at least some) concensus on that reasoning, the 
decision will not be finalised.

Jason

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[brett holcomb]

Sorry, it was supposed to be on list.  I'm using webmail. 
 Until recently all replies were sent to the list without 
fail.  Recently, I 've had some sent to the poster and not 
the list.  I'll have to double check them now.

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 23:16:38 +0900
  Jason Stubbs <jasonbstubbs@mailandnews.com> wrote:
>Please never ever reply to me off list.
>
>On Friday 28 November 2003 22:57, brett holcomb wrote:
>> Because I've finally found a distro that works. I've
>> watched Unix mess up the desktop, been condemmed to use
>> Windows for years, used Linux and suffered the RPM mess.
>>  I finally found Gentoo which is an almost perfect 
>>distro.
>>  It provides a large number of packages, is easy to
>> install, maintain, and upgrade and allows us choice in
>> what we want to run. And then people want to Debianize
>> Gentoo.  Yes, they still do - that's not dead by any
>> means.  It shows in some of the comments and in the
>> attitude of which "immoral licenses" was one I've 
>>received
>> in this thread.  It's an attitude that anyone who uses
>> non-free isn't worth consideration so let a third party
>> fill in the gaps or they can go elsewhere. Well, we 
>>can't.
>>  The free only can always go to Debian - we only can go
>> back to RPM distros!  It appears choice is good as long
>> it's free-only.
>
>While some people may have that attitude it never makes 
>its way into anything 
>that is released with Gentoo. Do you think this sort of 
>debate has never came 
>up before?
>
>>   I have no problem with adding license handling being
>> modified so that all of us can build systems as we 
>>desire
>> and that allow us to do our jobs.  I do have a problem
>> with Gentoo being changed so that we who use non-free
>> software have to make the changes - why should we.   If
>> someone is that hot to have it change let them make the
>> changes to their make.conf or whatever file.  Yes, even
>> having to do that change may be a small item but the
>> camel's nose appeared small when he first shoved it 
>>under
>> the tent.   I've said more than I should so I'll just
>> watch and see what happens.
>
>Most new Linux users assume that everything associated 
>with Linux is free. The 
>only reason I can see to have a default of "free-only" 
>licenses is to make 
>sure those users are aware of the agreement under which 
>they're using the 
>software. As well as that, many users who use "non-free" 
>software (myself 
>included) are interested in the terms under which they 
>are using it. Your 
>opinion doesn't sound so much like the free vs. non-free; 
>it sounds like 
>those who care about licensing vs. those who don't.
>
>The addition of licensing to Gentoo is in no way related 
>to the free vs. 
>non-free debate; only the defaults is. When the defaults 
>are decided it won't 
>be by a vote on free vs. non-free; it will be decided 
>with valid reasoning as 
>in the above. Until there is (at least some) concensus on 
>that reasoning, the 
>decision will not be finalised.
>
>Jason
>
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>gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Luke-Jr]

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On Friday 28 November 2003 01:00 pm, brett holcomb wrote:
> So assume we make it so the rest of us have to do the work 
> to make Gentoo usable - will it stop with just having to 
> modify /etc/make.conf or once that is achieved what's next 
> - eliminate packages that are "immorally licensed" but are 
> necessary to make Gentoo usable because we don't believe 
> in the licenses .  It appears choice is good except when 
> it doesn't agree with a political philosophy.
I don't see how anybody would argue to remove such packages from portage. 
Their presense doesn't do anything until they are actually installed.
My preference for license defaults requires adding a single line with an alias 
to make.conf for *both* users who want only free software and users who want 
anything...
In addition, in the Windows world, the administrators need to go to the 
trouble to click the Accept button on the license agreements whenever they 
install software. Not much more complicated than saying 'yes' to the license 
when emerging (interactively).
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Mike Gardiner]

Apologies if I missed something but I can't keep up with the mail in
this thread. Two questions however,

o  Has this idea been GLEP'ed ?
o  If not, can some dedicated, interested individual please read through
the emails (most likely having a good grasp of the discussion anyway)
and provide a short summary to the list? Including points that are yet
to be finalised would be good, and may direct the discussion (it seems
fairly wayward from what I can pick up). It would be much appreciated.

Hopefully the second request might bring this to some sort of
conclusion, that could be formed into a GLEP if need be (and if it isnt
allready).

Regards,
Mike (Obz)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2003-11-28 at 05:39, Chris Bainbridge wrote:
> On Thursday 27 November 2003 19:50, Luke-Jr wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > > Just to chip in my 2p to the thread that refuses to die. Why does the
> > > system  administrator have to agree to any license before installing
> > > software? He is quite a separate person from the user and copyright law,
> > > and licenses like the GPL, only cover redistribution, not installation,
> > > so he need not concern himself with those either. Surely if programs have
> > > user restrictions then it is the responsibility of the program to display
> > > a clip wrap license for each individual user, otherwise how would they be
> > > aware one exists?
> >
> > Other licenses (which I personally would probably never accept) may cover
> > installation.
> 
> In that case, there should be a (hopefully short) list of those licenses, and 
> only those licenses should be covered by the license-install-accept variable 
> in make.conf. It is not possible, or legal, for the system administrator to 
> accept licenses governing usage or redistribution on behalf of other users.

Would you care to explain ALL click-through licenses then?  I would say
a good 99% of them are only shown to the person installing the software,
which is always the administrator, except in the case of a user
installing the software to his home directory, which is NOT ever the
case portage.

While it may not be the best method of license acceptance, it is the
only method we have available.  It is our job to ensure that we do what
we can to maintain compliance with the license as set forth by the
software authors.
-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

Is your power animal a penguin?

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Sandy McArthur]

Philippe Coulonges wrote:

> I think we need some categories, so each user can choose from predefined
>
>sets.
>I propose : FSF_APPROVED_GPL_COMPAT, FSF_APPROVED_NOT_GPL_COMPAT,
>OSI_APPROVED, GENTOO_APPROVED_FREE_SOFTWARE, NON_FREE,
>NON_FREE_ASK_INTERACTIVE
>
[...]

>That lets 2114 ebuilds and 266 licences we still have to check. Does
>someone wants to continue the minute check ?
>  
>

Guys, you DO NOT want to open the can of worms that is  grouping 
licenses into categories. I made the mistake of creating the "as-is" 
license and I'm sorry for it.

Kind of like an ISP chooses not to inspect the content of the packets 
you send/receive so they can claim to be not responsibile, Gentoo does 
not want to inspect and pass judgement on any licenses because that 
increases Gentoo's liability in many ugly ways. Unless someone is 
willing to imdeninify Gentoo then it would be best if people stopped 
thinking aliases for groups of licenses is a doable thing.

Disclaimer: I'm not a laywer.

Sandy McArthur

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:01:02 -0500 Sandy McArthur <sandymac@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| Guys, you DO NOT want to open the can of worms that is  grouping 
| licenses into categories. I made the mistake of creating the "as-is" 
| license and I'm sorry for it.

No, that can be left for the FSF and OSI.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh
Mail:    ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web:     http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Friday 28 November 2003 19:25, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>
> Would you care to explain ALL click-through licenses then?  I would say
> a good 99% of them are only shown to the person installing the software,
> which is always the administrator, except in the case of a user
> installing the software to his home directory, which is NOT ever the
> case portage.
>
What is even worse, I dare to make the stance that 99% of the people clicking 
yes did not read even half of the agreement.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Philippe Coulonges]

Le Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:11:58 +0000
Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> écrivait :

> On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:01:02 -0500 Sandy McArthur
> <sandymac@gentoo.org> wrote:
> | Guys, you DO NOT want to open the can of worms that is  grouping 
> | licenses into categories. I made the mistake of creating the "as-is"
> | license and I'm sorry for it.
> 
> No, that can be left for the FSF and OSI.

OK. I understand that.
But we can still group FSF and OSI accepted licenses to help users that
want pure GNU/Gentoo, no ?

CU
CPHIL

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 21:33:13 +0100 Philippe Coulonges <cphil@cphil.net>
wrote:
| > | Guys, you DO NOT want to open the can of worms that is  grouping 
| > | licenses into categories. I made the mistake of creating the
| > | "as-is" license and I'm sorry for it.
| > 
| > No, that can be left for the FSF and OSI.
| 
| OK. I understand that.
| But we can still group FSF and OSI accepted licenses to help users
| that want pure GNU/Gentoo, no ?

Sure. Wasn't I the first person to suggest that, several thousand posts
ago? :)

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh
Mail:    ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web:     http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Jason Stubbs]

On Saturday 29 November 2003 00:16, Mike Gardiner wrote:
> o  Has this idea been GLEP'ed ?

Currently under way. I won't reveal the name of he who is writing the draft, 
lest he be harassed, but the information is free to anybody who really wants 
to know anyway.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Philippe Coulonges]

Le Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:53:46 +0000
Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> écrivait :

> On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 21:33:13 +0100 Philippe Coulonges
> <cphil@cphil.net> wrote:
> | > | Guys, you DO NOT want to open the can of worms that is  grouping
> | > | licenses into categories. I made the mistake of creating the
> | > | "as-is" license and I'm sorry for it.
> | > 
> | > No, that can be left for the FSF and OSI.
> | 
> | OK. I understand that.
> | But we can still group FSF and OSI accepted licenses to help users
> | that want pure GNU/Gentoo, no ?
> 
> Sure. Wasn't I the first person to suggest that, several thousand
> posts ago? :)

Sorry.
But you know, when a troll award winner like this thread happens, noone
can read all the posts and remember everything everyone says.

Any concrete, raisonnable and constructed proposal is certainly three
drinks behind now.
I checked the licences to try getting back to concrete and divert the
subject from the "Users want only free / Users don't care about
licenses" scheme.

To follow on the theme, I would say that since we have hundreds of
licences of which only about 50 have been checked by the FSF and/or OSI,
we could ask the FSF to pronounce on the others.

Alternative could be to shoot dead anybody trying to publish yet
another OSS license ;-)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Christian Birchinger]

I still think that an alias for all non-free licenses which
don't restrict usage and don't require "OK" clicking from a
vendor would be good.
I also think it should be on by default but i could live
without it and tell people who ask me to enable it so they
don't have to mess with it ever again.

On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 03:33:12AM +0000, Luke-Jr wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Friday 28 November 2003 12:22 am, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> > Whereas a _majority_ of users will want nonfree. And the point of 
> > defaults is to cater to the majority, is it not?
> However, *all* users *must* accept the 14-or-so minimal licenses for a Gentoo 
> system. Last I checked, the USE defaults cater to what is in most cases 
> required, not what is usually desired (in which case, I think about 80-90% of 
> the USE flags should probably be listed).
> - -- 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Christian Birchinger]

A small thought about all this license default stuff.
I think it should accept everything by default which doesn't
ask the user to accept something on first launch or installer
start. This is mostly everything which comes as source or in
normal .tar.gz archives. The reason is that with this kind of
software the user has to unpack everything anyway to read the
LICENSE file or the README.
In reality this are mostly games or "big" commercial apps.
That's ok because those arent that many. What i would hate to
see is that the user needs to accept licenses for stuff like djb
ware (no i'm no fan of it it's just an example).

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Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Marius Mauch]

On 11/29/03  Christian Birchinger wrote:

> A small thought about all this license default stuff.
> I think it should accept everything by default which doesn't
> ask the user to accept something on first launch or installer
> start. This is mostly everything which comes as source or in
> normal .tar.gz archives. The reason is that with this kind of
> software the user has to unpack everything anyway to read the
> LICENSE file or the README.
> In reality this are mostly games or "big" commercial apps.
> That's ok because those arent that many. What i would hate to
> see is that the user needs to accept licenses for stuff like djb
> ware (no i'm no fan of it it's just an example).

my 0.02¢: add all non-problematic licenses to make.globals and add
several examples to make.conf for "fsf-only", "fsf+osi", "status-quo",
whatever-is-needed, that should cover all needs.

Marius

-- 
Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be
Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better.

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