[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Add operator + for licenses (EAPI-4 ?)

[Mounir Lamouri]

Hi,

As you should know, GLEP 23 [1] introduced USE flags conditions in
LICENSE variable and || operator in addition of licenses groups and
ACCEPT_LICENSE variable.

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0023.html

I want to show an issue in ACCEPT_LICENSE that have to be fixed with a
new operator in LICENSE variable.
Imagine we have ACCEPT_LICENSE="GPL-3", every ebuilds without GPL-3 in
LICENSE variable will be filtered even ebuilds with LICENSE="GPL-2" and
a lot of packages are actually GPL-2+, not GPL-2 "strict". That means
they should be shown if ACCEPT_LICENSE="GPL-3".
It's even worst when we try to use ACCEPT_LICENSE to have a free
operating system. Let's suppose 'free' in fsf free and osf free,
LGPL-2.1 is free for both but LGPL-2 isn't and we can suppose, most
LGPL-2 licensed packages in the tree are LGPL-2+ actually.

So, what I propose is to let a license to be suffixed by the + operator.
In this case, if a newer license is accepted by ACCEPT_LICENSE, the PM
should not filter the package.

I think it's not a hard modification and it will only need an amend to
GLEP 23 (in addition of implementations in PM's).

Thanks,
Mounir