interactive ports - the plague

[Wesley Shields]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 11:30:44AM -0500, Wesley Shields wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 04:22:28PM +0100, Nikola Le??i?? wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: RIPEMD160
> > 
> > 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.

I was just informed that a port which is gpl2 _only_ can not be built
into a package if it depends on a port which is gpl3.  However, IANAL
and have not done any research into this so don't take my word for it.

I'm not sure how this is enforced other than asking maintainers to pay
close attention to their ports and marking them as NO_PACKAGE
accordingly.  Maybe requiring explicit license information in the
Makefile will have the added benefit of forcing maintainers to look at
the license.

-- WXS