Re: [gentoo-dev] ACCEPT_LICENSE revisited

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Tue, 2006-11-21 at 17:59 +0100, Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> Am I correct in thinking that the ACCEPT_LICENSE behaviour will just
> affect how portage calculates whether something can be installed or not
> (much like the behaviour w.r.t. KEYWORDS)?  In this is the case,
> interactivity doesn't have much to do with it.  As Brian suggests, a
> RESTRICT=interactive seems to be the most appropriate way to allow the
> admin to prevent portage from trying to install packages that need
> interaction during the install (whether it's for inserting CDs,
> accepting licenses, or any other reason).  It depends on what
> "ACCEPT_LICENSE" means to the package manager.  I take it to mean that
> the package may be considered for inclusion during emerge - i.e. the
> sysadmin is happy for portage to attempt to install packages under
> those licenses onto the system - rather than that licenses are actually
> accepted by the admin or user.  If that's correct, perhaps naming it
> "ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES" would be clearer.

It is used to mask the package, correct.  When a package is masked, it
gives the output of the license, or, if the license it too large (I
think Marius set it at 20K) informs the user to read the license file.
It also explains to the user that they will need to read and accept the
license.

RESTRICT="interactive" should be restricted to only the contents of the
ebuild.  ACCEPT_LICENSE="RTCW-ETEULA" emerge enemy-territory is *not*
interactive, whereas "emerge ut2004-data" always is.  This is exactly
why we are trying to keep licensing separate from ebuild interactivity.
They are not the same thing, at all.

ACCEPT_LICENSE needs to be used for backwards compatibility.  It is
being used currently by many Gentoo users, myself included, for licenses
which I have accepted.  ACCEPT_LICENSE is very much like
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS.  We don't use ACCEPTABLE_KEYWORDS, do we?

> Some packages require each user to accept the license explicitly when
> it is run (e.g. Acrobat Reader), some require it to be accepted
> explicitly during install (Enemy Territory) - in neither case should
> portage be taking automatic responsibility for actually accepting the
> license.

It isn't.  The package manager will not be accepting anything.  The
*system administrator* does the accepting... just like if I were to
"emerge enemy-territory" now.

> On naming - please can we avoid calling any group "NOT-<something>".
> Since the ACCEPT_LICENSE syntax allows -<license>, it's much better to
> use affirmative names always; in this case for example
> INTERACTIVE-INSTALL-ACCEPTANCE instead of NON-MUST-HAVE-READ.  One can
> define
>
>   ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES="* -@INTERACTIVE-INSTALL-ACCEPTANCE"
>
> easily enough.

Except we don't want that.

We don't want to support ACCEPT_LICENSE="*" including the interactive
licenses, since that *would* be skipping the requirements on the
license.  This has been discussed on the bug report, already, but unless
we made "*" not really equal "*", then it won't work, as it won't fill
the requirement that the license is accepted.

Now, I ask everyone to go read the bug before posting any more comments,
since most of this has been discussed quite a bit there, and doesn't
need to be rehashed.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation