Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

skoal · 2005-01-03 23:02:11

Can someone point me to an existing package that handles a license agreement? I'm trying to figure out the proper procedure if a user "does not accept" the agreement. What to do? "Pacman -R foo" after it's already installed? Not that it's an issue for me, but I was going to post the PKGBUILD for others that may be interested.

phrakture · 2005-01-03 23:13:44

the nvidia package handles it by saying "if you don't agree then you must remove this package"

what you can do is this:
at the end of the post_install script, read in a y/N value for a "do you agree" clause.... if they select No (have it default N to avoid controversy), do the opposite of what the cookie cutter post_install script does... run /bin/false instead of /bin/true.... this should rollback the whole install

skoal · 2005-01-04 00:14:21

ah...forgot about that package. I don't use that package anymore but I remember what you're talking about now.

That'll work.

Xentac · 2005-01-04 04:50:07

phrakture wrote:

the nvidia package handles it by saying "if you don't agree then you must remove this package"
what you can do is this:
at the end of the post_install script, read in a y/N value for a "do you agree" clause.... if they select No (have it default N to avoid controversy), do the opposite of what the cookie cutter post_install script does... run /bin/false instead of /bin/true.... this should rollback the whole install

The problem with that is that we try to have all install procedures happen without user intervention. It makes it a lot easier to write a library, for one.

phrakture · 2005-01-04 15:54:27

Xentac wrote:

The problem with that is that we try to have all install procedures happen without user intervention. It makes it a lot easier to write a library, for one.

Yes, but I think this can be resolved with some careful use of the LICENSE field.....

pkgname=foo
pkgver=0.1a
...
license=commercial
license_file=EULA.txt
...

pacman now knows this is a commercial license, which means you must agree to the license_file in order to install it.... this can be done before the install and the EULA.txt file can be included in the package....

just speculation...

for licensed packages, I think that user interaction should be required somewhere in there....

i3839 · 2005-01-04 17:05:22

Apps with such nasty licenses which don't even allow distribution shouldn't be packaged.

phrakture · 2005-01-04 17:31:54

i3839 wrote:

Apps with such nasty licenses which don't even allow distribution shouldn't be packaged.

oi, not again....

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=7378

sarah31 · 2005-01-04 18:57:42

i3839 wrote:

Apps with such nasty licenses which don't even allow distribution shouldn't be packaged.

if your feeling are so harsh on licenses why do you even bother with computers.... or anything for that matter? Just strip naked and go into the wilderness.

99% of the products out there that you consume (ie books, beer, underpants, etc) are protected in some way by license, patent, or copyright. It is the only way that many people get paid ANYTHING is because of laws which protect "intellectual property". The whole ideal of laws, rules, and morals is to protect what humans find to be important to their social makeup. The abstract thought of ownership and creation are so important that to remove the idea of ownership would have serious consequences for more than just financial structures.

I may not like many of our rules, laws, whatever but to disobey one of them for my own satisfaction can have far reaching consequences for others. If you question licesce and copyrights and other protection laws then you HAVE TO question the entire theory and reason behind them.

in the end you will find that how much you hate copyrights, patents and licenses usually stems from a lack of finances to afford that which you want which is protected by such laws. If you are rich you will rarely see laws as barriers.

I know the more money I have the less i care how much I am being gouged by DVD, clothing, and music manufacturers.

skoal · 2005-01-04 19:07:15

I have to agree with Phrakture on how to handle a license, and my PKGBUILD does as he suggests it should. Although it's just for my personal use (and experience writing PKGBUILDs), my concern should be obvious.

There are a lot of good commercial applications out there, and people with 5.1 surround systems surely wouldn't mind that it's commercial. Would they? With that said, a package build for this plugin really isn't necessary, but I built it to keep my system clean, manageable, and easily trackable.

On a related note, Nvidia doesn't package their drivers in RPM format or similiar anymore. I'd be curious to know, when they did have RPM's available, how the RPM managed their EULA. It might be something our package maintainer might want to look at, for the sake of liability.

i3839 · 2005-01-04 19:15:36

I wasn't talking about non-free, closed source versus GPL, or whatever touchy things, only about licenses of apps which don't allow easy distribution. What license people or companies want to use for their software isn't my problem and I don't care (until I use that software, but that's irrelevant and personal).

The thing is, why should Arch or Pacman bother to help distribute their software, adding special support for EULA's and what not? And I'm not talking about Nvidia drivers, as they changed their license so that it may be distributed by distros, but about things where users must explicitly agree with a license before it may be installed. Putting precious time in supporting packages which are made purposely hard to distribute is silly.

So phrakture, no oi, as that url is about something totally different. Sarah, you should have posted in the thread phrakture linked to, here it's off-topic, so I'll ignore it. ;-) You make some interesting points where we could have a great discussion about, but here is not the place.

phrakture · 2005-01-04 20:06:35

i3839 wrote:

The thing is, why should Arch or Pacman bother to help distribute their software, adding special support for EULA's and what not? And I'm not talking about Nvidia drivers, as they changed their license so that it may be distributed by distros, but about things where users must explicitly agree with a license before it may be installed. Putting precious time in supporting packages which are made purposely hard to distribute is silly.

But doesn't the nvidia license require explicit agreement to the license still?

What if, because of lawsuits and things, the new GPL (3?) requires explicit agreement? Then it has to happen anyway.... not saying that will happen... it's a "what if".

Here's my reasoning behind my original post:
pacman has a license field... it's just not used. It's going to be used eventually, but there is no consensus as to how... with only minor changes, all these "hard to distribute" packages will be easy... theoretically...

Another thing is that, Arch is not really a handful of people anymore, especially when it comes to packages... we have TURs, soon AUR... it's not just 3 or 4 people making packages, it's the whole community.... if I really really wanted to package Cedega (blegh) I would... and most likely post a PKGBUILD for it.... (cedega has a 30 day free trial now...) and I'm sure at least some people would like it.

Saying that package A is hard to distribute, so the minority of people who want it are out of luck doesn't sound too appealing to me.

i3839 · 2005-01-04 22:18:45

Part of Nvidia's license:

2.1.2 Linux/FreeBSD Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms
of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux or
FreeBSD operating systems, or other operating systems derived from the
source code to these operating systems, may be copied and redistributed,
provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way
(except for unzipping of compressed files).

So no. It's the difference between a license and a contract. You never need to explicitly agree with a license as you need to comply to it anyway. A license gives you a right which you don't have by default. GPL will never become a contract and will stay a license, so it will never be needed to sign/click anything. If it happens anyway (the "what if"), then we have much more important things to worry about than this. ;-)

The license field is mostly informational, so that you know what you install. You can change Pacman and so on to make it interactive and supporting such EULA packages, but IMHO that's wasted time, as is making packages for such apps. It's the company making A who's responsible for the distribution if it adds an EULA or hampers the distribution in any other way. It's only fair, they caused the problems, they may fix it. Or you can make it easy for them and support their apps.

If you really want to make a package of A then do so, but you don't need to change Pacman for that, you can just make a first time run script which prompts with the EULA and keep Pacman as it is. If you need to agree with the EULA before downloading then you may not make a package anyway.

Atriqus · 2005-01-08 08:29:07

More programs need to have a declaration of yoink clause so these arguements don't have to take place.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-01-03 23:02:11

Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#2 2005-01-03 23:13:44

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#3 2005-01-04 00:14:21

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#4 2005-01-04 04:50:07

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#5 2005-01-04 15:54:27

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#6 2005-01-04 17:05:22

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#7 2005-01-04 17:31:54

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#8 2005-01-04 18:57:42

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#9 2005-01-04 19:07:15

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#10 2005-01-04 19:15:36

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#11 2005-01-04 20:06:35

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#12 2005-01-04 22:18:45

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

#13 2005-01-08 08:29:07

Re: Handling "license agreements" from commercial pack

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