Re: [gentoo-dev] licensing query : Splice

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:
> I've never seen this before in  10 years  using Gentoo.
> Has anyone verified that Splice's licence is compatible with Gentoo ?

What do you mean by "compatible with Gentoo?"

Gentoo is not a party to the distribution or use of splice, so why
would Gentoo need to be concerned with its licensing?  We are merely
providing a script that helps a user who legally has the right to
install/use it to do so.  The license listed in the ebuild is listed
as a convenience to the user.

Gentoo is fairly unique among Linux distros in that we separate the
distribution of the content of a package from its installation
script/metadata/etc.  If a package has a license which does not permit
redistribution we simply don't redistribute the portions of it for
which we do not hold a license.  That is also why you won't find any
"Iceweasels" or such in Gentoo - we don't distribute modified upstream
files, therefore we are not subject to any restrictions on the
distributions of such.

There is nothing illegal with providing an installation script for
somebody else's binary, as long as you don't distribute the binary.
Look at the long tradition of Windows install/patch tools for an
example of this.

Rich