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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Michael Raskin <7c6f434c at mail.ru> writes:

> What I care about is:
> 1) not breaking existing workflows
> 2) possibility to present more detailed licensing information
> 3) possibility to process data automatically
> 4) guidelines for analyzing the license

Let me sum up my needs too (I should have started with that!), so we can
make progress.

I want to be able to automatically distinguish between free [0] and
non-free software, so I can ultimately instruct ‘nix-env’ & co. to use
only free software (while still allowing people who want to use non-free
software to do so.)

I’m looking for a technical solution to achieve this goal that:

  1. Is the least intrusive for other contributors (e.g., does not
     change the way they work.)

  2. Does not rely on non-trivial cooperation from other Nixpkgs
     contributors, such as defining accurate ‘meta.license’ or
     ‘meta.license.reviewed’ attributes, etc. [1]

  3. Makes it as easy as possible to share work between the free and
     non-free variants of Nixpkgs. [2]

  4. Allows licensing meta-data to be maintained accurately for free
     software packages that have been audited.

I think some of our goals are similar.

Let’s try and find solutions that satisfy all our needs.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

[0] Unless otherwise stated, I’m referring to the definition at:
    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html .

[1] This is based on the observation that only a subset of the Nixpkgs
    contributors is interested in software freedom (or willing to take
    the time to struggle for it.)

[2] For instance, a “free” Nixpkgs SVN branch would introduce
    significant overhead.