I'm not going to get into the free/non-free conversation other than to say I appreciate, and I think a lot of users appreciate at least having free & "non-free" software available in the portage tree, whether or not they choose to use the non-free stuff.
Though I still think it's important to have some kind of license acknowledgement for licenses other than the GPL. The reason is that some licenses may have restrictions that the end-user is not aware of, and it is not immediately apparent what license a particular package is when a user installs it. Or that package could depend on another package with a different license that the user is unware of. I don't think of it as being "politically correct." I just think it'll help the user know what he/she is getting into. So while I don't consider it an absolute requirement, I do think that it doesn't in anyway "harm" Gentoo and is generally a "good thing." -=m=- -----Original Message----- From: Brett I. Holcomb [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 8:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo internal structure To be honest Jason, I think we need to leave it as is. Gentoo is a distro that allows us to get work done and not get into the "if you use non-free software you have betrayed humanity" argument. If we're not careful we will end up the same as Debian. The person raising the question is a zealot who will accept nothing less then all free software and no non-free. That was explained many times and he, like all of us have a choice - use a distro that fits whatever philosophy you have. Gentoo does not have the Debian philosophy so for people who want that they can use Debian or another equivalent. For those of us who just want to do a job and if non-free is the best then we'll use the non-free/commerical stuff and stick with Gentoo. Why should all of us who agree with the Gentoo philosopy have to add a bunch of licenses stuff to make.conf or wherever just to satisfy people who would be happier with Debian type distros anyway. We can get in a situation like those who try to be politically correct - they are constantly modifying their school, program, whatever to fit the whims of the latest politically correct mandate. Gentoo's social contract is available to read - if we feel so strongly that we can't agree to then we can go to another distro. The id licensing is, to me, an odd case. That's the only package it's been an issue. VMware and the others seem happy to let us have it in portage - probably because they are time limited demos. Don't mess with a good setup - it isn't broken so don't fix it <G>. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
