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Peter Cech posted <20060123000011.GC16835@×××××××××.sk>, excerpted below, |
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on Mon, 23 Jan 2006 01:00:11 +0100: |
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|
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> What leads you to believe the license texts distributed in portage tree |
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> are legaly binding with respect to the packages? Each packgage carries |
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> (or at least should carry) its license embeded inside. In my |
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> understanding, licanse pointers in ebuilds are purely informative and |
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> allow you to check the terms of the license (and decide if the license |
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> is acceptable) before you actually perform any legaly binding action |
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> (like running 'emerge app-foo/bar'). |
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|
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One of the legal issues involved is that Gentoo normally strips the |
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COPYING or similar files that would normally come with the package and be |
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placed in /usr/share/doc/. The idea is that one copy of the GPLv2 (for |
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example) on the system is enough. Thus, what the package carries is |
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stripped out in favor of the Gentoo placeholder version, and the question |
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is whether that placeholder version is then satisfactory from a legal |
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standpoint, or not. |
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|
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The points made to date indicate that the old timers tend to be |
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comfortable with the current situation, but nobody has provided a |
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satisfactory legal reference or opinion that justifies this position. |
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Just because it's been done that way for some time doesn't mean it's |
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legally correct, and that's what's worrying to some posters (myself |
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included, altho I'm not a Gentoo dev). |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in |
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http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html |
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
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