On 29 Nov 2000, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Rando Christensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > What does everyone think? Is this too farfetched of a plan, or is it a
> > Good Idea?
>
> It's not a horrid idea, but it doesn't solve the problem, which is
> that the GPL requires that you give a copy of the GPL to anyone you
> give the binary for a program to.
Hm. How bout moving the /etc/licensing to /usr/share/doc/licensing and
hardlinking them, then symlinking /etc/licensing to
/usr/share/doc/licensing ? does hardlinking count as distributing a copy?
The main problem I see with distributing a copy with each, is, well, this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 eyez illuzion 17976 Feb 13 1997 COPYING
> 17976*600
10785600
That's what, 10 megs of GPL? And it's not hard to have 600 gpl'd packages
installed. That's one HELL of a waste of space. Even when I gzip -9'd a
copy of the GPL, it was 6386 in size, which is still 4 megs on 600
packages. That's not practical in any way, when all 600 of these are going
to be identical. No matter how many there are.
So the only Practical way to do it is with hard or symbolic links. Maybe
rewiring dpkg to check for the license. And install the hard copy in
/usr/share/doc/licensing/ if one does not exist for that package. That's
what I meant when I said that it would require some work.
One other idea is, Install the COPYING file gzipped at the end of the ar
archive.. But that's still overall pointless, as it'll only work on an ar
x.
.deb's are meant to be distributed for debian systems, anyway. Other
distributions should provide their users with a way to get these programs,
or the user shouldn't have to rely on a .deb. Besides, if they can't find
it, they can download the source package from a debian archive, and
there's their GPL?
<rant>
Anyone installing a .deb in it's proper way should have a copy of
the license. RMS can go to hell if he thinks i'm gonna waste 10 megs where
17k is appropriate, just so he can be pedantic about non-debian-users who
are using debian packages.
</rant>
Which brings up a question. Are OTHER distributions doing this? RedHat,
Linux-Mandrake, SlackWare?
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