[Nix-dev] Separating free and non-free packages, again

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

Nicolas Pierron wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 14:20, Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl> wrote:
>> A while back we had a discussion about separating free and non-free packages in
>> Nixpkgs.  The main motivation is that it allows people to make completely free
>> Nixpkgs / NixOS installations.  For instance, last week at the GNU Hackers
>> Meeting we discussed doing continuous integration builds of the various GNU
>> packages.  Obviously, you don't want an accidental dependency on a non-free
>> package in such builds.
>>
>> After talking with Ludovic at the GHM, we came up with the following plan:
>>
>> - Create a directory pkgs/non-free.
> 
> This information seems to be redundant because the license should give
> you such information.  Such separation is similar as duplicating the
> license terms, first in the Nix expression, second in the directory.

Yes.  However:

- Currently most (free) packages lack a meta.license attribute.

- We don't actually have a tool to check a dependency graph's meta.license
attributes yet.

- Even if every package has a meta.license attribute, it doesn't give you the
ability to phyiscally remove the expressions from tree (though I personally find
that less important).

So it seems a lot simpler, especially in the short term, to move the few
non-free packages to a separate directory.

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~dolstra/