[nycbug-talk] and on pkgs and licenses

[George Rosamond]

I'll jump in if the thread starts to moves... but assume some of you saw
this:

http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/2013/12/09/12934.html

Now, to almost directly quote one OBSD dev, if LICENSE isn't defined in
the port's Makefile, it's a bug.

While from what I've been told, it's a recent addition to the FreeBSD
port Makefile, which explains why it's sparsely used.  I had thought it
was there for a long time, if not often enough.

The idea is this: FreeBSD has made serious progress in removing gpl'd
code from base.  For users or entities that are building systems, esp
ones that are being redistributed in some gpl-conflicting manner, why
not make this a bit more explicit with a simple flag during build, pre-
or post-install message or as an 'audit' function?

And obviously it should apply to pkg systems also.

Curious to hear other thoughts... but to be honest, what drove me to
this first was about doing a binary audit of systems, i.e., some type of
audit system that alerts a user to unauditable binary blobs being
installed or existing on a system, certainly a noble and useful function
in this era...

g, aka "ball of energy"