Re: [gentoo-dev] License Checking

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Fri, 2003-11-28 at 05:39, Chris Bainbridge wrote:
> On Thursday 27 November 2003 19:50, Luke-Jr wrote:
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> > > Just to chip in my 2p to the thread that refuses to die. Why does the
> > > system  administrator have to agree to any license before installing
> > > software? He is quite a separate person from the user and copyright law,
> > > and licenses like the GPL, only cover redistribution, not installation,
> > > so he need not concern himself with those either. Surely if programs have
> > > user restrictions then it is the responsibility of the program to display
> > > a clip wrap license for each individual user, otherwise how would they be
> > > aware one exists?
> >
> > Other licenses (which I personally would probably never accept) may cover
> > installation.
>
> In that case, there should be a (hopefully short) list of those licenses, and
> only those licenses should be covered by the license-install-accept variable
> in make.conf. It is not possible, or legal, for the system administrator to
> accept licenses governing usage or redistribution on behalf of other users.

Would you care to explain ALL click-through licenses then?  I would say
a good 99% of them are only shown to the person installing the software,
which is always the administrator, except in the case of a user
installing the software to his home directory, which is NOT ever the
case portage.

While it may not be the best method of license acceptance, it is the
only method we have available.  It is our job to ensure that we do what
we can to maintain compliance with the license as set forth by the
software authors.
-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

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