Re: Gentoo GNU/Linux and non-free packages

[Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org>]

[Apologies for being off-topic in emacs-devel, but I think that I must
answer this.]

>>>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2010, Richard Stallman writes:

> If you use Gentoo, you have to work really hard to avoid installing
> non-free software.

Do you know this from first experience, or is it only hearsay?

> Someone recently told me that some innocent-sounding package pulled
> in some non-free fonts, and he found out about this because the font
> package wanted him to agree to an EULA.

This is clearly not intended behaviour, and the person should have
reported a bug to the Gentoo bugtracker.

Generally, we have a Social Contract (similar to Debian's) that says
that Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software unless it
conforms to a free licence. [1]

Also, the newest version of our package manager, portage-2.2,
introduced an "ACCEPT_LICENSE" feature that allow users to filter
packages by their licence. For example, with the following setting:

   ACCEPT_LICENSE="@FSF-APPROVED @OSI-APPROVED"

the package manager would only see packages whose licences have been
approved by the FSF or the OSI (the sets of licences being defined
in [2]).

Ulrich

[1] <http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/contract.xml>
[2] <http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/profiles/license_groups?view=markup>