This new system is great, but it raises again the issue of how we are to treat packages which we don't have the right to redistribute.
We recently introduced a new category "Restrictive/Distributable" which covers cases of a non-free license which still permits us to redistribute in both source and binary form. The assumption here is that we are complying with conditions such as "may not charge for redistribution", "non-commercial use", and so on. Of course, this is a bit dangerous, still... for example, we might want to make a Fink CD-set some day and sell it, and then we might have forgotten about this assumption on certain packages. In addition to that, we still have a handful of packages with truly Restrictive licenses, where it's clear that we don't have permission to redistribute at all. Debian has handled this issue by separating software into free, non-free, and contrib trees (where contrib contains everthing that would be free were it not for the fact that it depends on non-free stuff). I'd like to propose a slightly simpler variant of this for fink: introduce a non-free category at the same level as "main" and "crypto". For the moment, I would put into this category everything with a Restrictive license, but not things with a Restrictive/Distributable license. I would also put in all packages which depend on things with a Restrictive license. We might have to revisit the issue later of whether Restrictive/Distributable packages should also go into this non-free category. With respect to Ben's mirror patch, both the software which creates the source repositories and fink itself need to be aware that for Restrictive packages its not appropriate to look for the source in the fink mirrors. Isolating all of these packages into "non-free" might make this easier. What do you think? -- Dave ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Etnus, makers of TotalView, The debugger for complex code. Debugging C/C++ programs can leave you feeling lost and disoriented. TotalView can help you find your way. Available on major UNIX and Linux platforms. Try it free. www.etnus.com _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
