| 1 |
Christian Birchinger wrote: |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
> It might sound a bit rude but i think the defaults should be |
| 4 |
> defined that most of the time only zealots need to tweak |
| 5 |
> them. I think most users don't care about most licenses and |
| 6 |
> shouldn't need to mess with this. |
| 7 |
|
| 8 |
I've seen several people express this attitude, and I like it a lot. |
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
Let me tell you about my retirement plan. I'm going to write a game, |
| 11 |
Linux-only, make it good enough that a few hundred of you will emerge |
| 12 |
it and try it out. Then I'll change the license agreement so that |
| 13 |
next time you emerge the game you'll owe me $1million US. Since |
| 14 |
you all have ACCEPT_LICENSES="*" as the default, you'll all accept my |
| 15 |
new license, I'll take you all to court (after subpoenaing apache logs |
| 16 |
from all the mirrors so I know who you are, and subpoenaing your |
| 17 |
make.conf and make.globals to prove you accepted the license), and sue |
| 18 |
you for my license fee. If I can recover 1% of what you'll all owe |
| 19 |
me, I'll be happy enough. |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
Okay, that's NOT REALLY my plan. I'm at least slightly ethical. (-: |
| 22 |
But it illustrates why you don't under any circumstances want |
| 23 |
ACCEPT_LICENSES="*", either as the default or as an option. Accepting |
| 24 |
a license has consequences, and those consequences can hurt you.* I'd |
| 25 |
recommend against letting the parser recognize a wildcard for licenses |
| 26 |
-- there's just too much danger for people who don't know any better |
| 27 |
to hurt themselves. |
| 28 |
|
| 29 |
That's my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. |
| 30 |
|
| 31 |
|
| 32 |
* For a real life example that's somewhat less heinous, consider the |
| 33 |
BitKeeper license. |
| 34 |
-- |
| 35 |
Bob Miller K<bob> |
| 36 |
kbobsoft software consulting |
| 37 |
http://kbobsoft.com kbob@××××××××××.com |
| 38 |
|
| 39 |
-- |
| 40 |
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
Archives