Re: Gentoo GNU/Linux and non-free packages

[Marek Aaron Sapota]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 03:44:50PM +0100, Tassilo Horn wrote:
> Marek Aaron Sapota <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 12:56:13PM +0100, Tassilo Horn wrote:
> >> I've just checked xorg-x11, and it has only hard dependencies to fonts
> >> licensed under the MIT license or public domain.  I guess, I've set some
> >> use flag, which enables this additional dependency.
> >
> > I've just checked what I have removed from the ebuild: Bigelow & Holmes
> > fonts - they are now labelled as MIT licensed. Unless the license was
> > changed recently it is incorrect, this fonts didn't permit changing them
> > if I remember right. 
> 
> Is that the correct license?
> 
>   http://www.xfree86.org/current/LICENSE11.html
> 
> Looks quite MIT-style to me.  Do what you want, but keep this copyright
> notice.

Looks like the license that was there before.
From this license:
The Font Software may not be modified, altered, or added to, and in
particular the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may not be
modified nor may additional glyphs or characters be added to the Fonts.
This License becomes null and void when the Fonts or Font Software have
been modified.

So non-free.

> 
> >> > To be a Free Distribution Gentoo would have to show commitment to
> >> > Free Software and they clearly don't.
> >> 
> >> The social contract does:
> >
> > In practice try installing Netbeans and see how it fails on
> > proprietary dependences.
> 
> I only had a brief look, but it seems it fails because of the license
> groups aren't complete yet.  I checked some required but license masked
> packages, and they were all free, although not GPL compatible,
> e.g. CDDL, Apache...

Even when you add this free licenses to your ACCEPT_LICENSE it fails.

> 
> Oh, well, there are some of those jsr packages (Java Specification
> Request).  As far as I understand from
> 
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process
> 
> those are reference implementations to new java features, which might
> eventually be included in the java language spec.

Still they are non-free, I don't know how gNewSense packages Netbeans
but it does so avoiding non-free software can be done. Gentoo ebuild it
pulls sun-jdk instead of using icedtea.

> 
> What would be interesting, is to know if the usual netbeans installer
> comes with and installs those proprietary addons.  If yes, then we
> should thank Gentoo for making us aware of those.
> 
> Bye,
> Tassilo
> 
> 

Some of default Netbeans modules are non-free, they are installed with
usual installer and with ebuild version (though this can be changed
using use flags).

Happy hacking
Marek Aaron Sapota

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