[Nix-dev] environment.allowedLicenses ?

Matthias Beyer mail at beyermatthias.de
Mon Jan 26 15:58:00 CET 2015


On 26-01-2015 15:52:03, Eelco Dolstra wrote:
> On 26/01/15 14:19, Matthias Beyer wrote:
> > On 26-01-2015 14:00:10, Eelco Dolstra wrote:
> >> Hm, I have the impression the license checking code is becoming pretty heavy at
> >> this point. For instance, what (realistically) is the use case for whitelisting?
> > 
> > Whitelisting a non-free license.
> 
> Doesn't that also require whitelisting all free licenses used by a configuration?

No, actually not. I tried to implement it in a way that the
allowUnfree setting comes first, whitelisting can be done for the
licenses which are not allowed by the allowUnfree settings and so on
...

> 
> >> I actually think we should *remove* meta.license entirely (because it doesn't
> >> provide useful info to users and tends to be wrong or incomplete anyway), and
> >> replace it with attributes that have operational meaning:
> > 
> > I'm heavily against this. Having the license in the package
> > information is (IMHO) the right way to do this.
> > 
> > Removing the license of a package is removing information about the
> > package, which I do not consider a good idea at all. You could remove
> > the maintainer and version, too, if you remove the license.
> 
> Well, those have an actionable meaning (namely, who to contact regarding
> problems in the package, and whether "nix-env -u" should consider a package
> newer). OTOH, most users don't care whether a package is licensed under the
> 3-clause or 2-clause BSD license.

But those who care about the licensing love to have it. And I think
it's not a "we have one user for this, so keep it" thing!

> 
> People who do care about the exact license of a package should use a tool like
> Ninka do extract the actual license, rather than depend on meta.license (since,
> as I said, it tends to be incomplete or wrong).
> 

What is ninka? Does it work with the Nix package manager? Does it
prevent Nix from installing non-free code?

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Kind regards,
Matthias Beyer

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