[Dev] [RFC] Package freedom requirements clarification [gnu.org #785062]

[Luke T. Shumaker]

At Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:00:25 +0100,
Michał Masłowski wrote:
> > I guess the question is:
> >
> >   Can we download and distribute non-free code, if it is immediately
> >   deleted at the beginning of the build process?
> 
> I don't want to assume that all this nonfree code has licenses allowing
> us to distribute it

Nonfree code that can't be distributed verbatim is fairly uncommon (at
least for the software that we package).  Those cases definately would
require us to create custom tarballs.

> (e.g. some has no license or invalid ones like
> mixing GPL with incompatible licenses).  It would also prevent users
> From legally selling CDs with our binary and source packages (since some
> of this nonfree code disallows selling), while we want to support this
> use.

I didn't think about that either.  I agree with you now.

> > If we decide that we can't, I will contact the pacman devs and discuss
> > getting `makepkg --allsource` run `prepare()`.
> 
> +1

I guess I'll be sending them a patch in the next few days!

Happy hacking,
~ Luke Shumaker