RE: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo internal structure

["gentoo.org" <marduk@gentoo.org>]

I'm not going to get into the free/non-free conversation other than to say I
appreciate, and I think a lot of users appreciate at least having free &
"non-free" software available in the portage tree, whether or not they
choose to use the non-free stuff.

Though I still think it's important to have some kind of license
acknowledgement for licenses other than the GPL.  The reason is that some
licenses may have restrictions that the end-user is not aware of, and it is
not immediately apparent what license a particular package is when a user
installs it.  Or that package could depend on another package with a
different license that the user is unware of. I don't think of it as being
"politically correct."  I just think it'll help the user know what he/she is
getting into.

So while I don't consider it an absolute requirement, I do think that it
doesn't in anyway "harm" Gentoo and is generally a "good thing."

-=m=-

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett I. Holcomb [mailto:brettholcomb@charter.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 8:35 PM
To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo internal structure


To be honest Jason, I think we need to leave it as is.  Gentoo is a distro
that allows us to get work done and not get into the "if you use non-free
software you have betrayed humanity" argument.  If we're not careful we will
end up the same as Debian.  The person raising the question is a zealot who
will accept nothing less then all free software and no non-free.  That was
explained many times and he, like all of us have a choice - use a distro
that
fits whatever philosophy you have.   Gentoo does not have the Debian
philosophy so for people who want that they can use Debian or another
equivalent.  For those of us who just want to do a job and if non-free is
the
best then we'll use  the non-free/commerical stuff  and stick with Gentoo.

Why should all of us who agree with the Gentoo philosopy have to add a bunch
of licenses stuff  to make.conf or wherever just to satisfy people who would
be happier with Debian type distros anyway.  We can get in a situation like
those who try to be politically correct - they are constantly modifying
their
school, program, whatever to fit the whims of the latest politically correct
mandate.  Gentoo's social contract is available to read - if we feel so
strongly that we can't agree to then we can go to another distro.

The id licensing is, to me, an odd case.  That's the only package it's been
an issue.  VMware and the others seem happy to let us have it in portage -
probably because they are time limited demos.

Don't mess with a good setup - it isn't broken so don't fix it <G>.


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list