interactive ports - the plague

[Wesley Shields]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 04:22:28PM +0100, Nikola Le??i?? wrote:
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> On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 19:35:29 +0100
> "Jesper Louis Andersen" <jesper.louis.andersen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I am not sure it would solve the particular problem, but one could
> > take a look at how NetBSDs pkgsrc build system copes with licenses in
> > general:
> > 
> > For each license type, there is a knob. The knob could normally be
> > interactive, yielding the exact same behaviour as now. But if an
> > appropriate ACCEPT_LICENSE_FOO=Yes is found in make.conf, then the
> > user has read and accepted that particular license type once and for
> > all.
> 
> The purpose of this pkgsrc's mechanism is to segregate pieces of
> software that use various licences so that users have a better legal /
> / philosophical control over what is installed on their systems. This
> doesn't change anything if you have to go to the vendor's site, log in
> and accept the licence manually.
> 
> > The downside is that this requires a considerable amount of work and
> > thought. What should happen when the license changes, for instance.
> 
> Then port (or package, in pkgsrc terminology) maintainer changes the
> appropriate line in package's Makefile. If the license in question is a
> new one, its text is being added to the pkgsrc tree.
> 
> (BTW, are/were there ideas of implementing something similar in Ports
> Collection?)

I know there is a wiki page keeping track of ports which use GPL3 (not
sure why, I have not kept up on what GPL3 means).  If the reason for
having this page is important enough - that is, more than curiosity -
then some kind of analogous mechanism to what you describe may be a good
idea.

-- WXS