Why not assign a notice for binary pkgsrc softwares?

[Cem Kayali]

Hello!

Dear NetBSD team, and users,


I would like to ask you whether it could be a good improvement to assign a
notice, whenever "make install" actually installs a binary software.

These notices are mentioned in software licence mostly, but i would prefer a
notice stating that ie; "please be aware of that you are now installing
binary version of the software".


For example, if you would like to install kmplayer software, it actually
requires mplayer and then win-codecs too. It asks for mplayer and win-codecs
license, but a user is not aware of that accpeting the license simply means
building abinary package.

Opera is another good example. We ALL know, it has closed source, but please
check opera license that it says " etc etc etc and you are accepting Opera
etc etc" but it does not clearly states it is binary software.


Regards,
















-----
 
 
 
----------------

Cem KAYALI
 
eticaret.com.tr
hostTurkiye.com

http://www.eticaret.com.tr http://www.eticaret.com.tr 
http://www.hostTurkiye.com http://www.hostTurkiye.com 
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Why-not-assign-a-notice-for-binary-pkgsrc-softwares--tf4748204.html#a13577151
Sent from the netbsd-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Greg Troxel]

  I would like to ask you whether it could be a good improvement to assign a
  notice, whenever "make install" actually installs a binary software.

We have talked about this occasionally.  I believe that we should not
add this feature to the licensing framework.  It might well make sense
to add a way to denote various attributes of packages so that people can
be aware of attributes that they don't like.  The difficulty is defining
a set of attributes that would be useful.

You have suggested "binary", but that's actually more subtle.  There can be

  binaries for which no source is available
  binaries for which source is available, e.g. openoffice from oo.org
  binaries built as part of pkgsrc ("make bin-install")

Then, there's the issue of whether the feature is useful enough to
justify the maintenance headache.  Do you think there are a lot of
people who are willing to add many non-free licenses to
ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES but who are unware that software with icky licenses
often comes as binary only?

[Cem Kayali]

Greg Troxel wrote:

You have suggested "binary", but that's actually more subtle.  There can be

  binaries for which no source is available
  binaries for which source is available, e.g. openoffice from oo.org
  binaries built as part of pkgsrc ("make bin-install")

Then, there's the issue of whether the feature is useful enough to
justify the maintenance headache.  Do you think there are a lot of
people who are willing to add many non-free licenses to
ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES but who are unware that software with icky licenses
often comes as binary only?

Yes, i'm aware of type of binaries you mentioned, but "make install"  (not make-bin-install) simply installs a binary package by only accepting terms of license.

Well, you assume, only high-skill people use netbsd... is this really true?

Regards,