Re: Gentoo GNU/Linux and non-free packages (was: 'bzr init-repo .' crashes for lack of module bz2. Help, please!)

[Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoulli.cc>]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 21:45, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>    Indeed, Gentoo also ships non-free packages and has no simple switch to
>    tell the package manager to never install non-free packages.  But at
>    least when installing a package, you can easily get a list of it and its
>    dependencies including the licenses.
>
> This enables you to achieve, with a lot of effort,
> what free distros do automatically.

From a manpage about configuring the development version of portage (the
default package manager of Gentoo):

	ACCEPT_LICENSE = [space delimited list of licenses or groups]
		This  variable  is used  to  mask  packages  based on  licensing
		restrictions.  It make  contain  both license  and group  names,
		where  group names  are prefixed  with the  '@'  symbol. License
		groups   are   defined   in   the   license_groups   file   (see
		portage(5)). In addition  to license and group names,  the * and
		-* wildcard  tokens are  also supported.  Refer to  GLEP  23 for
		further                                              information:
		http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0023.html.
		Defaults to the value of * -@EULA.
		Examples:
		# Accept any license
		ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
		# Accept any license except the "public-domain" license
		ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -public-domain"
		# Only accept licenses in the FSF-APPROVED license group
		ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FSF-APPROVED"

The rational can be found in the mentioned "glep":

    http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0023.html

So provided that you use the development (which works just fine for a lot of
people) it is not very hard to move away from non-free software. Thought the
default is something else. Just add this to /etc/make.conf:

    ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FSF-APPROVED"

After that portage will inform you of installed packages that are "masked", in
this case because of license issues.  Then it is mostly a mater of removing
these packages which isn't hard to do, and you don't have to do it all at once.

At one point this will become standard.  So while Gentoo isn't there yet it's
moving.

-- Jonas