[Nix-dev] Separating Free/non-free package

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

To achieve a separation of Free (per
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) and non-free packages in
Nixpkgs, I’m considering splitting ‘all-packages.nix’ in 3 files such
that:

  gnu-packages.nix ⊆ free-packages.nix ⊆ all-packages.nix

The ‘gnu-packages.nix’ file can be easily obtained by grepping for
“mirror://gnu” and similar.  The second one would include
‘gnu-packages.nix’ and definitions for other free software packages; it
will need auditing work on our side, which is probably going to be a lot
of work, which can be done incrementally.  Finally, ‘all-packages.nix’
will include ‘free-packages.nix’ and provide definitions for proprietary
software and software that hasn’t yet been audited.

Ideally, each of these files should be usable as a drop-in replacement
of the current ‘all-packages.nix’.

If nobody objects, I’d like to start with the first step (moving GNU
package definitions in ‘gnu-packages.nix’) possibly by the end of the
week-end.

Opinions?

Thanks,
Ludo’.