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Ed W wrote: |
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> Hi, how do others handle open source licence compliance when building |
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> some base system using gentoo? |
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Review the packages that get built, and adhere to their licenses. It |
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can be a fair bit of work. |
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> In particular I guess simply capturing the ebuilds is not sufficient |
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> and it's necessary to capture and distribute all the source and |
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> patch files used to create a build. |
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How do you build your system? If you use catalyst, the open source |
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gold standard citizen publishes spec files, snapshot, toolchain and |
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toolchain source. |
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> The emerge tool doesn't obviously give a way to capture this stuff. |
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First step is to analyze licenses. emerge does know the license for a |
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package, and it is available in /var/db/pkg/ after install. |
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> I looked in the eclasses, particularly the epatch file and I'm not |
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> clear that I can easily hook into that. |
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If you have patches which use a different license than the package |
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they modify then you have more work to do. Portage doesn't help here. |
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A good start would be to add record of all patches applied by emerge. |
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Indeed add it into the epatch command. |
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> Whilst the above is largely targeting GPL type licences, are there |
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> other things I should consider for other licences? |
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Yes. You obviously need to adhere to all licenses used by the |
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packages in your system. :) |
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> Other things I need to ensure I distribute for GPL? |
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Read the licenses, really. |
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> Any pointers to (simple) documentation on how one can be a |
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> compliant open source citizen..? |
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It's not simple. You have to learn the requirements of each license |
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and see if and how they allow themselves to be combined. There are |
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businesses doing exactly that. If you want to DIY I think you just |
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have to start by reading the licenses. You may or may not want an |
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IP lawyer sitting beside you while doing it. |
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//Peter |