[Nix-dev] Unfree packages in Nixpkgs

[Alexander Kjeldaas]

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Eelco Dolstra
<eelco.dolstra at logicblox.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> tl;dr version: The default value of the ‘allowUnfree’ Nixpkgs
> configuration flag
> has changed from ‘true’ to ‘false’. This means that if your NixOS system
> configuration requires unfree packages, you need to add
>
>   { nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true; }
>
> to your configuration.nix.  If you're using Nixpkgs standalone, you need
> to add
>
>   { config.allowUnfree = true; }
>
> to ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix, or pass
>
>   --arg config '{ allowUnfree = true; }'
>
> on the command line. (Also, note that unfree packages don't even show up in
> ‘nix-env -qa’ unless you have allowUnfree enabled.)
>
> Longer version: Nixpkgs has since the beginning been intended as a free
> software
> distribution, but the use of unfree packages is sometimes hard to avoid
> (for
> example, the NVIDIA X11 drivers), so Nixpkgs has always included some
> unfree
> packages. This is problematic, because it can cause a NixOS user to
> accidentally
> specify a system configuration that contains unfree packages, which might
> lead
> to unexpected legal problems. For example, the license of the Teamspeak
> server
> package disallows renting Teamspeak servers, so a NixOS configuration that
> enables it has limitations that the user may not be aware of.
>
> To deal with this problem has long been a contentious matter. One option
> was to
> move unfree packages into a separate repository, but that's annoying
> because 1)
> it's more work for users to deal with multiple repositories; 2) it creates
> an
> inter-repository dependency management issue.
>
> So the present solution is to:
>
> * Allow unfree packages in the Nixpkgs repository, provided that they have
> a
> meta.license attribute with a value of "unfree" or
> "unfree-redistributable".
>
> * Throw an exception if you try to evaluate such a package, unless the
> Nixpkgs
> configuration option ‘allowUnfree’ is set to true.
>
> This means that we can keep unfree packages in the Nixpkgs repository, but
> users
> don't get exposed to them unless they explicitly ask for it.  For example:
>
>   $ nix-env -iA nixos.pkgs.skype
>   error: package ‘skype-4.2.0.13’ in ‘.../skype/default.nix:68’ has an
> unfree
> license, refusing to evaluate
>
>
This error message is pretty unhelpful.  Maybe an url or at least the word
'allowUnfree' should be mentioned to help the poor user who stumbles upon
it.

Alexander


> but
>
>   $ nix-env -iA nixos.pkgs.skype --arg config '{ allowUnfree = true; }'
>
> does work.
>
> Note that the allowUnfree flag does not affect packages with the
> "unfree-redistributable-firmware" license, which are always allowed.  This
> is
> because banning firmware packages is really too masochistic at present.
>
> --
> Eelco Dolstra | LogicBlox, Inc. | http://nixos.org/~eelco/
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