Re: [GNU-linux-libre] [libreplanet-discuss] programming language package manager

[Paul M]

On Mon, 2016-04-11 at 21:44 -0400, Tyler Romeo wrote:

> > * Ask the people that run those repositories to stop recommending
> > nonfree software.
> 
> I think one additional feature I would like to see (not so much for the
> repositories themselves but for the underlying software), is a means of
> placing license restrictions on your projects or libraries.
> 
> Most of the repositories listed are based on manifest files that contain
> license metadata about the package, but none of the underlying package
> managers contain means of:
> 
> * disallowing non-FLOSS-licensed packages; or even so much as
> * ensuring the licenses of all libraries are compatible with each other.
> 
> This alone would be a large step to encouraging more FLOSS solutions.
> A next step would then be to try and encourage projects to enable the
> restriction.
> 

I have been thinking along similar lines, namely adding something like a
disallow-non-free. or gpl-compatible option to the package manager
(which would have the side-effect of placing a license restriction on a
project if the developer uses it but also ensures that end-users can
avoid accidentally installing things as a dependency they legally
can't).

I looked into licensing on PyPi (the Python package repository). I
believe it was intended to be open-source but I didn't see anything
requiring this. What I did see in a quick survey was a few packages that
were marked as things like 'for educational use only'. This is certainly
a problem. Even if I can legally  use these packages if I distribute
software that has them as a dependency I am creating a legal burden on
my end-users especially as pip does not list the license of packages it
installs. 

Paul M