Re: [gentoo-dev] "Commercial" software in portage

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 10:31 -0700, Matthew Marlowe wrote:
> >> We could add a license, called "commercial" into the tree.  This license
> >> would look like the following.
>
> I would definitly support adding "commercial" as a license group as part of
> GLEP23 implementation.

This isn't so much talking about GLEP23, but doing an interim
implementation *now* since I've not heard anything from GLEP23 for some
time.

> As part of adding any new commercial license to the tree, developers would have
> to add the license to the commercial group.
>
> >>  While this will break completely
> >> interactive ebuilds until GLEP23 is fully implemented, a user can add
> >> the license to make.conf in an ACCEPT_LICENSE variable, to keep portage
> >> from asking again.
>
> We wouldnt break anything (hopefully) if we just do this as I specified above.

Except GLEP23 isn't implemented, so we cannot rely on it.

> Also, I'm wondering if we truly need check_license in ebuilds.  Instead, we could

Yes.  GLEP23 support is not in portage yet.  Certain packages (which
will rename nameless, *cough*enemy-territory*cough*) *require* that the
user accept the license before it is installed.

> require that all licenses listed in the commercial group be manually added to
> the ACCEPT_LICENSES line /etc/make.conf before emerging.  If the license
> wasnt added, emerge would stop and ask the user to add the license manually.

This is almost what check_license does, except it doesn't require the
user to add it manually, just accept the license.

> Therefore, the user would be explicitely indicating their approval of the license by
> adding it.  Implementation could be as simple as ACCEPT_LICENSES not allowing
> "+commercial" to be defined.  It makes no sense, or at least we shouldnt encourage
> someone to say they agree to all commercial licenses so easily anyway.  The default
> portage ACCEPT_LICENSE would be -commercial.

Anyway, you didn't answer my question, at all.

My question is about adding a "commercial" license to portage *now* and
adding it to relevant ebuilds so it shows up when users do an "emerge
-S" or look in http://packages.gentoo.org now, not when GLEP23 finally
rolls around.  At that time, I would expect there to be a proper
implementation.  Of course, I also think that there's no point in
grouping commercial licenses at all if we aren't going to allow
acceptance of them all as a group.  Commercial licenses are individual,
so they should stay that way, but that's a discussion for another
thread... ;]

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux