[Nix-dev] Java license, how to present it for acceptance ?

[Nicolas Pierron]

Hi Marc,

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 21:50, Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> wrote:
> http://download.java.net/dlj/DLJ-FAQ.txt
> says "Present for acceptance end user licenses"
> [..]
>
> "[..] A click-through mechanism is the preferred way to do this [..]
>
> [..] For instance, on
> Debian and derivative distributions, you could configure the
> package so that if the debconf key for accepting the DLJ has not
> been pre-accepted, the installation will be canceled if the
> license cannot be presented [..] "

<joke>
So we should not support Java programs :)
</joke>

> So do we need a
>
>  accecpJavaJREJDKLicense = true;
>
> setting in config.nix ?

I think this is a bad idea because licenses are made to be read before
the user check the option to accept them.  I will prefer to get
something which call "less LICENSE.txt" and ask us to accept or refuse
the license.

Of course this can be boring if you have to check all GPL licenses, so
we may introduce a ciphered file like config.nix which cache all
previous choices.  Therefore if the license of the project is
changing, then you will get a new message.

The "bad idea thing" is to have this flag so easily writable by the
user which can not ensure that the user has read the license first or
that he read the trick on the web to bypass the license checking.
This implies that the key may depends on the computer & user settings.

Now the question, is how should we do that ?

-- 
Nicolas Pierron
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron
- If you are doing something twice then you should try to do it once.