Re: [gentoo-dev] TrueCrypt and it's lovely license

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Dane Smith <c1pher@g.o> wrote:
> @Trustees: Any thoughts? I didn't mean to step on any toes, I just
> hadn't spotted that old bug until today.

So, speaking only for myself, my thinking is that there is enough
debate over the truecrypt license that I see no point in not just
playing it safe and restricting mirroring.  Restricting mirroring will
make Gentoo itself not a party to any redistribution (at least not a
direct party).  If we further restrict fetching you could argue that
we're getting ourselves out of the facilitation business as well (not
a legal theory I'm enamored with).

I'd like to propose that devs should not commit ebuilds that do not
have mirroring restrictions unless the license is in
@BINARY-REDISTRIBUTABLE.  Perhaps this should be a repoman check.
Whether something ends up in that group is more complicated, but
repoman doesn't need to worry about that.

Neither Debian nor Ubuntu redistribute TrueCrypt.  That at the very
least should give us concern with doing so.  Their license is also not
considered free by any of the usual bodies.

Sure, it is a little hassle for users, but not that much in the big
scheme of things - especially since other distros don't package it at
all.  Better to let any lawyers we retain focus on getting the
foundation in better order and not have them fighting over licenses.

Rich