Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: linux-firmware

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 8:28 AM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
> Diego Elio Pettenò wrote:
>> The policy is also because any ebuild relying on a network service
>> to work cannot be assured to work at any point in time
>
> While noble, I think it is a bit naïve. Reality is that many if not
> most ebuilds *anyway* rely on temporal things - such as a current
> enough versions of portage, or a new enough profile, or tar and sed.

These are things that we have covered, generally speaking. @system
will bring in tar and sed, and a minimum version of portage. Old
profiles are tagged as deprecated, and users are encouraged to migrate
to current profiles. The PMS defines which bits the ebuilds can use,
and if a program needs a 'newer' sed, it should say so in its
dependencies.

We could add something like PROPERTIES="network" to packages that
require the network. I'm vaguely sure for instance, that some
src_test() phases require a functioning network to work properly.

>
> Requiring git and a network connection is the restriction imposed by
> the copyright holder. There's really no way around that.

I'm confused though, we can easily just make 2 ebuilds.

linux-firmware[non-free] <- the use flag to toggle between free and
non-free licenses.
linux-firmware-noredist <- This one is RESTRICT="fetch mirror"

RESTRICT="fetch mirror" already exists, has existed for years, and
exists for exactly this purpose.

>
>
>> depends on the network connection of the user, but it also depends
>> on the service to be available.
>
> Right, because those files can only be legally distributed by the
> service on the network. No matter how much you and I think that
> sucks, it is still the only way for the user to get that file.
>
> It makes no sense to make that unneccessarily difficult for users.

I don't think fetch restriction is that annoying. You could argue that
we do it debian / ubuntu style where the files are fetched in a
postinstall, but I think that is sort of hacky myself.

>
>
>> So don't even _think_ about trying to ask for an exception for Git,
>> because you'll have to have it over my ssh key.
>
> This is just trying to be a bully and acting like a drama queen,
> which does nothing but make you look super silly, and that seems
> completely unneccessary.
>
> If you dislike something then you should express that in a more
> mature manner so that people can actually take you seriously.
>
> When you behave badly like this you just end up getting bad behavior,
> spite and disrespect in return, even if it takes a while to reach you.
>
>
> //Peter
>