[gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Luke-Jr]

I have been reporting bugs over the past few months regarding licensing 
issues, and inappropriate dependencies on non-Free software. Someone 
recommended I begin a thread on -dev, however, seeing as it may be of greater 
concern in regard to Gentoo's Social Contract.

Reading over the Social Contract, there is a bit of ambiguity about what is 
meant by Gentoo not depending on non-compliant software: does this refer to 
only the base system? A specific desktop or server configuration, or 
configurations? To the maximum extent possible where upstream makes it 
possible?

The most recent issues I have encountered are quite troubling with regard to 
wanting a Free desktop OS: Gentoo now patches KDE to depend on a specific non-
Free font, and Poppler has a hard dependency on the non-Free poppler-data 
(which is only needed for displaying non-embedded non-Latin fonts). Short of 
workarounds via package.provided, these two dependencies make a simple KDE 
desktop impossible on Gentoo without non-Free software. The xorg-x11 7.4 
metapackage also added a number of dependencies on non-Free fonts. There have 
been a number of other similar issues I've encountered over the past year.

To help mitigate this problem, I propose completion of GLEP 23's 
implementation; we already have a working ACCEPT_LICENSE, but the "minimum" 
groups (in particular, @OSI-APPROVED) are as of yet still not defined. By 
enabling more users to filter by approved licenses, I feel these issues will 
get more attention.

Comments? :)

Luke

P.S. I'm subscribed to -nomail, so if your reply is directed specifically to 
me or you want to ensure I read it, feel free to CC.

Re: [gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

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Luke-Jr wrote:
> I have been reporting bugs over the past few months regarding licensing 
> issues, and inappropriate dependencies on non-Free software. Someone 
> recommended I begin a thread on -dev, however, seeing as it may be of greater 
> concern in regard to Gentoo's Social Contract.

How have these bugs been handled?

> Reading over the Social Contract, there is a bit of ambiguity about what is 
> meant by Gentoo not depending on non-compliant software: does this refer to 
> only the base system? A specific desktop or server configuration, or 
> configurations? To the maximum extent possible where upstream makes it 
> possible?
> 
> The most recent issues I have encountered are quite troubling with regard to 
> wanting a Free desktop OS: Gentoo now patches KDE to depend on a specific non-
> Free font, and Poppler has a hard dependency on the non-Free poppler-data 
> (which is only needed for displaying non-embedded non-Latin fonts). Short of 
> workarounds via package.provided, these two dependencies make a simple KDE 
> desktop impossible on Gentoo without non-Free software. The xorg-x11 7.4 
> metapackage also added a number of dependencies on non-Free fonts. There have 
> been a number of other similar issues I've encountered over the past year.

I would not like it if we are patching software to depend on non-free fonts.

> To help mitigate this problem, I propose completion of GLEP 23's 
> implementation; we already have a working ACCEPT_LICENSE, but the "minimum" 
> groups (in particular, @OSI-APPROVED) are as of yet still not defined. By 
> enabling more users to filter by approved licenses, I feel these issues will 
> get more attention.

I don't know how this has been implemented. I believe they are just lists, but I
am not sure where. We should probably have some file such that for each license
we can specify whether or not it is a member of some group. That will make it
clear which license has been considered for what:

GPL-2:OSI,FSF
MS-EULA:!OSI,!FSF
license-X:
license-Y:FSF
licenze-Z:OSI

With lists it isn't clear whether a license does not belong to a group or hasn't
been considered. Unless we introduce the complement groups explicitly. For each
group OSI we also have the group !OSI. That way the infos would be there, even
though they would still need to be extracted by some tool.

> Comments? :)

Done! ;)

> Luke
> 
> P.S. I'm subscribed to -nomail, so if your reply is directed specifically to 
> me or you want to ensure I read it, feel free to CC.

Live Free or Die,

Marijn

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode
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Re: [gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Rémi Cardona]

Luke-Jr a écrit :
> The xorg-x11 7.4 
> metapackage also added a number of dependencies on non-Free fonts. There have 
> been a number of other similar issues I've encountered over the past year.

I'll reply to that. The xorg-x11 meta package contains everything 
upstreams considers important, including fonts.

With the latest patches in >=x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3-r3, X can work 
_without_ any fonts at all. Old apps and toolkits (xterm, motif, tk, 
Xaw, ...) will look ugly as hell but they should work.

In a nutshell, don't use the xorg-x11 meta.

Cheers

-- 
Rémi Cardona
LRI, INRIA
remi.cardona@lri.fr
remi@gentoo.org

Re: [gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Mike Frysinger]

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this really belongs on gentoo-project
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Luke-Jr]

On Thursday 12 March 2009 06:53:21 am Marijn Schouten (hkBst) wrote:
> Luke-Jr wrote:
> > I have been reporting bugs over the past few months regarding licensing
> > issues, and inappropriate dependencies on non-Free software. Someone
> > recommended I begin a thread on -dev, however, seeing as it may be of
> > greater concern in regard to Gentoo's Social Contract.
>
> How have these bugs been handled?

It can vary. Some of the more trivial things (incorrect LICENSE values) seem 
to be ignored more often than fixed. gsm/sox I believe ended up with 
RESTRICT=mirror in a timely fashon (they are not legally redistributable). The 
KDE team seemed interested in fixing up the font issue, though there was a 
little original hesistation along the lines of whether Gentoo cared if a font 
was not free to sell. The poppler issue seems to be waiting for input/action 
on the printing hurd since March 8th (4 days ago).

> > To help mitigate this problem, I propose completion of GLEP 23's
> > implementation; we already have a working ACCEPT_LICENSE, but the
> > "minimum" groups (in particular, @OSI-APPROVED) are as of yet still not
> > defined. By enabling more users to filter by approved licenses, I feel
> > these issues will get more attention.
>
> I don't know how this has been implemented. I believe they are just lists,
> but I am not sure where. We should probably have some file such that for
> each license we can specify whether or not it is a member of some group.

GLEP 23 defines this as a file profiles/license_groups with one line per 
group, formatted: <groupname> <license1> <license2> ... <licenseN>

> With lists it isn't clear whether a license does not belong to a group or
> hasn't been considered. Unless we introduce the complement groups
> explicitly. For each group OSI we also have the group !OSI. That way the
> infos would be there, even though they would still need to be extracted by
> some tool.

Since GLEP 23 already defines a format for this, and all those tiny files 
would use excess disk blocks, perhaps something like this should be considered 
as "source" material and "compiled" into the license_groups file by a simple 
shell script. :)

Re: [gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

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� wrote:
> Luke-Jr a �crit :
>> The xorg-x11 7.4 metapackage also added a number of dependencies on
>> non-Free fonts. There have been a number of other similar issues I've
>> encountered over the past year.
> 
> I'll reply to that. The xorg-x11 meta package contains everything
> upstreams considers important, including fonts.
> 
> With the latest patches in >=x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3-r3, X can work
> _without_ any fonts at all. Old apps and toolkits (xterm, motif, tk,
> Xaw, ...) will look ugly as hell but they should work.
> 
> In a nutshell, don't use the xorg-x11 meta.

Do you mean:

1) don't use the xorg-x11 meta if you don't want not-completely-free fonts
or
2) don't ever use the xorg-x11 meta
?

Marijn

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode
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Re: [gentoo-dev] "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software"

[Rémi Cardona]

Le 12/03/2009 17:21, Marijn Schouten (hkBst) a écrit :
> Do you mean:
>
> 1) don't use the xorg-x11 meta if you don't want not-completely-free fonts
> or
> 2) don't ever use the xorg-x11 meta
> ?

A little bit of both. :)

Unlike the Gnome or KDE meta, most of the stuff in the xorg-x11 meta is 
useless for a standard desktop system. xorg-server is more than enough 
for those cases.

The only bits users might need are a few fonts (dejavu) and a few 
utilities such as xrandr/mesa-progs/xterm/...

As far as "non-free" fonts are concerned, users should stay away from 
the xorg-x11 meta.

Cheers

Rémi