Re: [gentoo-project] What should the default acceptable licenses be?

[Michał Górny]

On Sat, 2019-01-26 at 22:04 +0100, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote:
> I would like to point the community at the following bug
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/676248:
> Bug 676248 - non-free licenses are accepted without user prompt
>
> In summary the question is whether non-free licenses should be accepted
> by default in Gentoo. today only licenses requiring EULA are not
> accepted by default. So this is a good opportunity to discuss whether we
> should deviate substantially from other distros like Debian.
>

I think the key point in this discussion is: what is the reason for this
change?  Is it ideological ("because RMS tells us it's bad")?  Is it
copycat rationale ("because Debian does it")?  Or do you have any
specific practical implications to support this?  (They should really be
listed in this thread!  Otherwise this really feels like it's a change
requested to suit somebody's fancy).

My personal opinion is that our default ACCEPT_LICENSE should be a safe
default for our users.  Not because they could get impure with non-free
software but because we don't want them to fall into pitfalls created by
restrictive licenses.

Most notably, we don't want to require users to verify whether they are
allowed to use the program they've just installed, or whether they can
build it with custom patches.  If this change intends to help with this,
I'm for it.

However, I really do think you should clearly define the goals.  For
example, are you going 'free' to the point of defaulting to USE=bindist?

Also, what about restrictive 'free' licenses that can actually get
people into trouble, like AGPL?  I personally don't think it should be
allowed by default.  Given the recent example, we don't want people
getting into trouble by upgrading berkdb on their systems, if they just
happen to use it and don't know the upgrade requires them to change
their online applications.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny