Re: [gentoo-project] Re: changing the default of ACCEPT_LICENSE in portage

[hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org>]

On 07/25/2013 10:29 PM, Steven J. Long wrote:
> hasufell wrote:
>> Matthew Thode wrote:
>>> hasufell wrote:
>>>> Gentoo has a social contract [1] which makes a lot of noise about
>>>> free software. However our default settings allow to use almost
>>>> any kind of non-free license such as "all-rights-reserved".
>>>>
>>>> While I see nothing wrong with gentoo providing proprietary stuff
>>>> (and I have created a lot of such games ebuilds), I think
>>>> according to our philsophy and social contract we should make
>>>> people aware of free software and because of that also change the
>>>> default to:
>>>>
>>>> ACCEPT_LICENSE="@FREE"
>>>>
>>>> This is only about the _default_. We will have to change the
>>>> handbook at "1.d. Licenses" [2] and might also make a news item.
>>>>
>>> This is what I thought the default license group already was, I'm
>>> all for it :D
>>
>> The default is currently:
>>
>> ACCEPT_LICENSE:"* -@EULA"
>>
>> in /usr/share/portage/config/make.globals
> 
> This is reasonable, but can we have the above old-default commented out in make.conf,
> above the new setting? That way things are transparent, and users who want to switch
> to using non-free can do so easily without the EULA stuff being pulled in, aiui it
> would be if users simply put "*" in there.
> 

Sure.

> After all, as you yourself wrote about:
>> adding a line such as: ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
> ..users are likely to reach for that by default, too, when they shouldn't accept
> @EULA generically, but via package.license.
> 
> Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
>> Also this would affect the kernel sources when deblobbing is disabled.
>>
>> I am not against this move, but this will require a lot of effort in
>> educating users about the consequences.

I don't think it is that big. We have changed more critical defaults in
the past. A news item will suffice.

> 
> Presumably stages have been built, and machines installed using just @FREE? I'd just
> like assurance that these "consequences" are known not to affect a standard desktop
> install, or that this will be tested thoroughly before the switch, in which case it
> is not, one would hope, imminent.
> 

Of course we will test that and we will not just make it in silent, so
people don't get surprised when trying to update their production machines.