[Nix-dev] Packaging free software that costs money

[Christian Kauhaus]

Am 07.07.2016 um 01:18 schrieb Renato Alves:
> I don't think this issue concerns nix.

I'd go into the same direction. A party is free to distribute libre software for money or not, but must grant other parties the same rights. Formally, we (NixOS) may get the source and redistribute it with our own procedures (as long as we don't stop anyone else).

This is what most other Linux distros do: for example, Ubuntu packages and distributes Ardour just the normal way as .deb and nobody has a right to stop them.

That being said, we could do author of such software a favour and add a meta-attribute which gives a hint to the user that the authors would like to receive a monetary contribution.

E.g.,

  meta = {
    support_url = "https://project.local/subscribe";
  };

This meta attribute would result in a hint displayed at the end of nix-build or nix-env. I'd oppose against any stronger measures that would bring further complications.

My 2ct

Christian

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