[Nix-dev] commercial license

[Shea Levy]

On 11/18/2012 08:00 PM, Nicolas Pierron wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 4:59 PM, Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> wrote:
>> I'd force the user to set a config option like this:
>>
>> ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix:
>> {
>>    proprietary-licenses-accept.your-package = true;
>> }
>>
>> and only allow installing the software if this is enabled.
>> At least this requires attention from the users..
>>
>> I'm not a lawayer..
> I will suggest something stupid.
>
> But old games ensured that you bought the game by asking you to copy a
> piece from the license agreement.  Such as copying the word number 6
> from section 3, paragraph 4.
> I feel like using the same technique and comparing with a hash of the
> word would be more insightful from a lawyer perspective, because you
> have to find the license terms to answer the question.
>
> The binary choice does not imply that the person as got a chance to
> read the license before.  How many times have you checked the box
> without reading the terms of the license?
>

It makes sense to ensure that no one accidentally install unlicensed 
programs, but I don't think it's the place of the package manager to 
prevent people from purposely doing so. Unless there's good reason to 
believe that someone might add Marc's example nixpkgs config option 
without understanding what it means, I think it manages this problem nicely.