On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Marc Espie wrote:

> A while ago (>six months), the OpenBSD project met with similar
> considerations, and we put out a variation on the same scheme.
> Namely, our ports now mention
> PERMIT_{PACKAGE,DISTFILES}_{CDROM,FTP}
> to mean almost the same thing.
> 
> The only semantic difference is that it is reversed (we set
> PERMIT_XXX_YYY to Yes to mean that it's allowed to put the package
> on the CD/FTP site) and that we tend to insist all ports include accurate
> PERMIT_* information...

But what a difference... Four additional lines to every single package
"Makefile"? Sounds excessive, when you consider that it's a rare package
that can't be freely re-distributed, especially now that the crytpo/RSA
restrictions are about to disappear.
 
> So, as we've put this information on all our ports already, we're a bit
> loathe to go back and change the name everywhere.

I sympathize, but isn't that what you're asking us to do?
 
> Since the addition to NetBSD is fairly recent, maybe you could still
> reconsider the name ? Just so, as to avoid gratuitous drift between
> both systems.

"Recent" is irrelevant; if I understand you correctly, you're requesting
that NetBSD pkgsrc add about 4000 lines of makefile. I'm against the idea
on its merits. There are only a handful of packages for which restrictions
are really appropriate. Even for those, recognizing the restriction is
only a courtesy, not an enforcable legal requirement. As if all that work
up front weren't bad enough, it would seem to imply that every new package
submitter needs to do "research" before certifying that a distfile or
binary packagage is OK to distribute. And if a submitter or committer
doesn't want to stick his neck out? Then we'll have a bunch of holes in
our package system, and a big mess to straighten out later.

> (Even though our ports systems are not equivalent, I try to avoid gratuitous
> drift when I implement new functionalities, to wit the PKGPATH name which I 
> added recently. The implementation is somewhat different from NetBSD, but
> I chose the same name because it holds the same information).
> 
> I am not subscribed to tech-pkg@, but I read the archive regularly...
 



Frederick