Hi, According to GLEP 23 [1], the LICENSE variable regulates the software that is installed on a system. There is however some ambiguity in this: should it cover the actual files installed on the system, or everything that is included in the package's tarball? This question was asked several times in the past and arose in bug 492424 [2] again.
I've always preferred the first interpretation, because the second one
would inevitably require us to repack many tarballs, in order to keep
their license in @FREE. This would for example include the Linux
kernel, where we could no longer use deblobbing, but would have to
provide our own tarball with firmware blobs removed. Not sure if users
would be happy if we wouldn't install from pristine sources any more.
We also have mirror and fetch restrictions which allow us to control
what tarballs we distribute, independent of the LICENSE variable.
Nevertheless, I also see the point for covering the distfiles
contents.
Within existing EAPIs we have only one LICENSE variable available.
(Extending it would be possible in future EAPIs, but we would end up
with a very long transition period.) USE conditional syntax is allowed
in LICENSE, though. So I wonder if this couldn't be used for the
intended purpose. For example, for specifying licenses of distfiles:
LICENSE="<licenses of installed stuff>
srcdist? ( <licenses of unused stuff in distfiles> )"
This idea was discussed within the licenses team, and the overall
reaction was positive.
What do you think?
Ulrich
[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0023.html
[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=492424#c3
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