Both sys-apps/portage and eclasses in the Gentoo repository are licensed under GPL-2. Does this mean that any custom ebuilds (e.g. by non-Gentoo developers) must also be licensed strictly under GPL-2 only? I was unable to find any information about this. Please clarify or point me to the right direction. Thanks!
There's nothing stopping you from writing wholly original ebuilds under any or no license, though you'll be fighting an uphill battle against the QA and linter tools if you deviate from the standard boilerplate header. If you make them public you'll have to use a GPL2-*compatible* license at bare minimum, because using eapi and eclass functions could arguably constitute linking against GPL2 code.
(In reply to Enne Eziarc from comment #1) > There's nothing stopping you from writing wholly original ebuilds under any > or no license, though you'll be fighting an uphill battle against the QA and > linter tools if you deviate from the standard boilerplate header. > pkgcheck's EbuildHeaderCheck is based on GentooRepoCheck, so it shouldn't run on other repositories. If it does, please file a bug.
(In reply to Sam James from comment #2) > pkgcheck's EbuildHeaderCheck is based on GentooRepoCheck, so it shouldn't > run on other repositories. If it does, please file a bug. It's been a few years since I last tried to do anything more specific than edit the © year in the header. Looking at the git history of pkgcheck it seems like it's been toned down a bit since then.
(In reply to Enne Eziarc from comment #1) > There's nothing stopping you from writing wholly original ebuilds under any > or no license, though you'll be fighting an uphill battle against the QA and > linter tools if you deviate from the standard boilerplate header. > > If you make them public you'll have to use a GPL2-*compatible* license at > bare minimum, because using eapi and eclass functions could arguably > constitute linking against GPL2 code. Pretty much this, at least when any eclass is inherited. EAPIs are specified in PMS independently of their implementation in Portage, so the situation may be less clear there. Use something GPL compatible if you want to be on the safe side.
Closing because this bug report is not actionable. Feel free to reopen if there's a concrete problem, e.g. with QA tools.
(In reply to Ulrich Müller from comment #5) > Closing because this bug report is not actionable. > > Feel free to reopen if there's a concrete problem, e.g. with QA tools. I propose the following action. Please amend the devmanual and other relevant documentation to clearly state the conditions when custom ebuilds must be licensed under GPL-2 only.
