I've noticed that many ebuilds which need to unpack rar archives depend on "unrar". Unrar is under a privative license (unrar license). p7zip implements rar unpacking and is under a free software license (LGPL-2.1). I believe p7zip should be used to unpack rars in portage per-policy, as we are to keep our users as free as possible. That would require fixing all the ebuilds that depend/use unrar to depend/use p7zip instead. An example ebuild using unrar: games-emulation/ps2emu-spu2null/ps2emu-spu2null-0.4.ebuild
Apparently, as a friend has just pointed me, things are even more complicated: http://paste.debian.net/6102 It's still possible to unpack rars using just software that is free as in respecting your freedom, and I strongly think it's the way it should be preferred.
<snip> /usr/bin/7z /usr/bin/7za /usr/bin/7zr /usr/bin/p7zip </snip> Care to tell us how is that thing syntax-wise compatible w/ unrar? :P Besides the fact that it doesn't unpack rar archives at all, I just tried...
So there's this: * app-arch/unrar-gpl Available versions: 0.0.1 Installed: none Homepage: http://home.gna.org/unrar/ Description: Free rar unpacker Provides: none License: GPL-2 Apparently based on unrarlib: http://www.unrarlib.org/about.html Which is also free.
Reopened; It was marked as invalid but no explanation was given, nor I believe it's invalid. Probably a missclick.
(In reply to comment #2) > <snip> > /usr/bin/7z > /usr/bin/7za > /usr/bin/7zr > /usr/bin/p7zip > </snip> > > Care to tell us how is that thing syntax-wise compatible w/ unrar? :P Besides > the fact that it doesn't unpack rar archives at all, I just tried... > "7z x whatever.rar" I don't believe it's syntax-wise compatible with unrar, and there are other problems (see previous posts). It's more an issue of freedom, and using (by default) free implementations when they exist.
(In reply to comment #4) > Reopened; It was marked as invalid but no explanation was given, nor I believe > it's invalid. Probably a missclick. Uh? I gave you perfect explanation - it's not syntax-compatible and it doesn't unpack rars.
> (In reply to comment #4) > > Reopened; It was marked as invalid but no explanation was given, nor I believe > > it's invalid. Probably a missclick. > > Uh? I gave you perfect explanation - it's not syntax-compatible and it doesn't > unpack rars. > Marked as REOPENED. I didn't interpret what you said as an explanation. You didn't say "I marked it invalid because...". Also, I've told you: - How to unpack rars with p7zip (so you CAN unpack rars with p7zip). - How p7zip's freedom on its rar support part isn't so clear. - How there's still unrar-gpl. - How syntax compatibility doesn't matter, because... - How it's an issue about freedom, and about prefering free software over propietary software when it exists.
I think rvalles is right. I dont't understand your attitude, Jakub.
As rvalles has told, there are other alternatives to unrar that are free, and don't say that p7zip doesn't unpack rars.
Stop that please. Unrar is good enough. Bug those who ship rar Archives not to do so, if you don't like it.
(In reply to comment #10) > Stop that please. Unrar is good enough. Bug those who ship rar Archives not to > do so, if you don't like it. > REOPENED. This isn't an issue about liking rar or not, but about using the free software implementations when they're available. Which I believe is the Gentoo official policy. Please see http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/contract.xml
I concur, if we can avoid using non-free software why stick on proprietary unrar ? I'm also with rvalles on following the original gentoo contract, is not that hard after all, isn't it ?
(In reply to comment #11) Look - bugzilla is not here to preach about freedom. It's for bugs. p7zip is not a replacement for (un)rar, sorry.
I don't know about p7zip, but unrar-gpl is indeed a free substitute for unrar. See features of unrarlib (on which unrar-gpl is based): http://www.unrarlib.org/features.html It works well for extracting files, just like unrar, but is GPL and can be included in other programs. I think that this can be further discussed following Gentoo's policies; there's no reason for closing this bug.
> REOPENED. This isn't an issue about liking rar or not, but about using the free > software implementations when they're available. > > Which I believe is the Gentoo official policy. > > Please see http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/contract.xml You misread it. There's no Gentoo software or core component depending on the unfree unrar. Only some ebuilds, which install third party software, use it. If you want to see this change, open a discussion on the gentoo-dev mailing list. Once again: This is not a bug.
