[nycbug-talk] and on pkgs and licenses

[Eitan Adler]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 6:24 PM, George Rosamond
<george at ceetonetechnology.com> wrote:
> 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.

I used the words "relatively recent".

> 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?

You can set various make(1) variables to control licenses. I do not
know if pkg has similar functionality.  (see Mk/bsd.license.mk)

> 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...

You are not the only one involved in this effort.  There is a
'standard' called SPDX which is supposed to help - although it seems
primarily commercial for now.
In addition this has come up multiple times on license-discuss at opensource.org

FreeBSD specific things of course, are always appreciated.