Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: new global USE flag "srcdist"

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 8:51 PM, Michael Orlitzky <mjo@g.o> wrote:
> In essence, I don't want to *use* code that isn't @FREE. This includes
> the installed files, of course, but also the build system (that I use
> temporarily). We could generalize this to "any file accessed during
> emerge" to be on the safe side. That ensures that if I need to modify
> (and redistribute) any part of the software that I use, I can.
>
> What use case is there for having the LICENSE apply to anything else?

If you want to redistribute the source tarball (such as on an internal
mirror) then you might care what license pertains to the tarball.
RESTRICT=mirror only prevents mirrors using the standard Gentoo
software from distributing a file.  If you just have a server fetch
sources and share distfiles via NFS/rsync/etc then you're sharing
everything.  I actually use this approach for my VMs/etc to cut down
on network traffic and mirror load (my main Gentoo box is listed as
the first mirror, and also is used for SYNC).

> I think a better solution here, since these files are *installed*, is to
> introduce a new local flag (e.g. unfreeblobs) for the kernel that would
> append to LICENSE by the mechanism described below.

Well, sure, any USE flag that controls the installation of the blobs
should append the appropriate string to LICENSE.  However, that is a
separate (and also important) issue.

I'm trying to think of any issues the new approach would cause and I
can't think of any - it seems like a good move to me.  Those who don't
do anything get the current behavior, and those who care about
redistributing distfiles can filter licenses if they care to do so.
This also settles the ambiguity in what LICENSE means.  It is probably
worth noting that most packages wouldn't be impacted by this.

Has anybody tested whether ACCEPT_LICENSE handles USE conditionals
correctly?  If it is in PMS and it doesn't than that would be a
Portage bug, but we should probably be aware of what it does before
setting it all over the tree.

Rich