> We don't want to be sued. If a packages doesn't have a license field, > it won't get into the bindist. If it is under a restrictive license > which forbids binary redistribution, it won't get into the bindist. > If a package possibly infringes patents (like libgif does with the > unisys patent), it won't get into the binary distro. If a package > fails in any other way to comply the policy... you guess.
This seems a little extreme. I just checked and there are 570 packages in the source distro and only 83 in the bin distro. Are we saying that all of these have unacceptable licenses? Autoconf isn't even in the binary dist and if the GPL isn't acceptable, I don't know what is. I'm hoping that all of these packages have policy problems, since that is the other reason you site for possible omission, but even if this is the case, have the maintainers been notified? I think it should be a very important goal for fink to get the entire source distribution into the binary distribution. I definitely agree that having the _option_ to compile automatically from source is nice, but binary should definitely be the default. Also I think the, "we don't want to get sued" line is weak. If somebody has a problem with their software being distributed they mail the list and it's taken off the distribution. But more to the point, if someone is distributing the source to their software, what complaint would they make if you compiled it and distributed it. My main evidence for this is that every package in fink is present in Debian, and no one has sued them, and they are a hell of a lot more high profile that Fink is. -Matt _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel