Bug 930989

Summary:	Custom ebuild licensing
Product:	Gentoo Foundation	Reporter:	Jaak Ristioja <jaak>
Component:	Licenses	Assignee:	Licenses team <licenses>
Status:	UNCONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	gentoo+bugs, trustees
Priority:	Normal
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Jaak Ristioja 2024-04-30 21:29:49 UTC

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!

Comment 1 Enne Eziarc 2024-05-01 01:06:24 UTC

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.

Comment 2 Sam James archtester

2024-05-01 01:12:25 UTC

(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.

Comment 3 Enne Eziarc 2024-05-01 01:21:44 UTC

(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.

Comment 4 Ulrich Müller gentoo-dev

2024-05-01 07:41:51 UTC

(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.