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On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:38:50 -0400 |
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Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> |
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> wrote: |
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> The license isn't binary-only. The license is BSD. It just happens |
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> that the thing they're licensing is the binary and not the source. |
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> |
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> Does it really matter? Before we start overloading the LICENSE flag |
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> to represent something other than the license we should probably have |
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> a problem to actually fix. |
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> |
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> As far as freedom of code goes, arguably the code is perfectly free - |
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> it just isn't open source. You could legally decompile, modify, |
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> recompile, and redistribute it and your assembly language sources as |
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> much as you like. |
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Imho software as it's described here shouldn't get a LICENSE which is |
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in @FREE, such as BSD. |
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For a software to be free, it has to be possible to change it in any |
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way you want. And "to be possible" and "to be allowed" really aren't |
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the same here! (Except if you are either masochistic or one of these |
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gurus which eat assembly code for breakfast). |
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I have an ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE" in my make.conf, so I expect that |
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there's only free software on my system (except for those packages I |
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explicitly allowed via package.license, for sure). I couldn't make this |
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assumption anymore if software as you describe it would get a @FREE |
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LICENSE. |
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Cheers, |
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aranea |
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