In short, to install and use a gentoo system, the fast install guide says to do: - fdisk - mkfs - mount - wget && tar {stage3,portage_snapshot} - chrrot - emerge <stuff> - grub-install - reboot for those who know this process by heart in details, they do not even have to read the handbook. After tweaking timezone and make.conf, it is possible to emerge almost anything, like apache, mysql, xorg, mozilla, OpenSSL, and use those products WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING RESPECTIVE LICENSES. I open this bug for a simple reason: portage/emerge makes possible to use some products without acking license of author, what is essentially illegal in many countries, like in France for me, and I expect the problem to be similar in Germany and USA for example ... For example, LFS does not have this problem since the person who extract a source ball is responsible for reading the readme, and open the license. Still, portage/emerge offer front head that hide the licenses, and allow to install I want a solution compatible with stage1. PErsonally, I only use stage2, so lets draw up my solution, and more experienced people tell me if it could work with stage1. - emerge is designed for solving dep tree, downloading, unter, and compile. - once an app is compiled, there no easy way to prevent execution and ask a user to ack the license. - if emerge protects license of all aplication, the only way for the installer peron (aka client), is to use the stages as for building some LFS: download manually. -a- Emerge itself shall first protecte itself against it's own license, and do something like: - open a file like /etc/licenses/emrege.license, a file containing the license for emerge. - check at the bottom if user wrote a line like: "I have readed and ack this license" - unless that is done, emerge shall refuse executing itself, print out a relevant message, and exit at once. -b- after dependency tree is drawn, it shall expect the user to edit a file like /etc/licenses/all_accepted_licenses, which contains a list of what the user wants to use, a file NOT EVEN INCLUDING THE GPL BY DEFAULT, because in regard to law, GPL is an authorship license, and shall be acked before using the applications it covers. Unless that is done by portage, it is possible to install and use OpenSSL, MySQL and other 'not so free' softwares without acking licenses, what is illegal in many countries. This problem is aout to be coverd by a new French law that will make illegal the promotion of using softwares without acking licenses (-1- for offering a technical solution to work around licenses, -2- for maintaing some tutorials explaining how to use those technical solutions), so that Gentoo mirrors will be prohibetted on the French land, unless this bug is solved a way or an other. EVEN WHEN THOSE LICENSES ARE FREE example: - a company installs a gentoo 2005.1, install GPL softwares, but remove the auto-clean flag. - they grab the source in /var/tmp - they reuse the code and sell it as proprietary software - ipso-facto, they actually sell GPL code without having acknowledged the GPL license, and do some thing illegal, without having actually broken any license => in this case, Gentoo could be considered as a technical solution to help people doing illegal things. Just make impossible to emerge stuff without having acked the licenses of softwares about to be installed. DO NOT prevent searches is non acked licenses like proposed some how in bugs mentionned below. DO allow all searches, but prevent download/install if not acked yet. This bug is NOT a dup of: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17367 http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34146 I do like Gentoo, and use it; I report this bug in hope it will be fixed a way that French policemen never need to shutdown French Gentoo mirors. To my mind it is a security issue, but I wont tick since I rather expect that flag to be reserved for "computing security issues", so lets use "severity=major" Best regards.
We are making a linux distro, not politics. Besides, I don't see any difference here from Bug 17367. Dupe. Finally, you can always move a less sucky country, we don't plan to annoy users to hell just because some local laws suck. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 17367 ***
Although I agree with not making politics, the "you can always move a less sucky country" is the biggest bullshit you could have written :-)
If on a map you cross/tick all countries where there are politics problem, then those who have religion problem, then thoses where ethnics issues lead to conflicts, then those where the way of life does not match the one you want (lack of Intrenet, impossibility for girls to walk outside without any cover on head, too much ice, too much rain ...), then those where people have skin color you dislike ... then I fear you have to move to an other planet. Did your parents ask you for your agreement before they born you where they did? The fact French law are stupid may not be a significant reason to justify moving abroad. Thats why my initial report mentions about international companies which sell software in several places, where France and USA are examples, but not compleet list of places where the problem could lead to lawsuites. Using more harsh words: ""Gentoo <= 2005.1 helps companies breaking the GPL."" The rest is more like a moral problem. (why does RMS maintain GPL*/*, why did Linus move many drivers to GPL, why Linus left BitKeeper and created Arch ...)
You can't exactly ever make fully sure anyone ever reads any license... But, how would using gentoo to unzip a tarball be any different from manually using tar? You don't need to read and accept any license before downloading the kernel sources from kernel.org, but you will see the license when you read the files you've untarred. You will see the same files in /var/tmp/portage too. If you want to see which license some package has, emerge -s <package name>, then look in /usr/portage/licences to read it, and decide if you want to merge it. Maybe I'm just one of those who dislike bureaucracy..
