Subject: Re: [bug#55231] Understanding #:substitutable? and #55231

From: Leo Famulari <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2025 13:17:50 -0500

On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 04:10:22PM +0000, Morgan Arnold wrote:
> Maxime's concern seems to me to be more about the fact that this
> change facilitates (and arguably encourages) the accidental commission
> of copyright violations. This issue is not necessarily specific to
> Linux+ZFS, but is the primary example being discussed because
> facilitating Linux+ZFS systems would be a major application of this
> patch.

Thanks Morgan. I agree that if we are not understanding Maxime's point,
I hope we will be corrected.

If Maxime's concern is that Guix should not make it too easy for users
to distribute software for which they do not have the license, I hear
that concern, but I argue that we shouldn't go very far with it. Of
course, Guix itself should not do that kind of thing, but we shouldn't
go out of our way to prevent users from doing so.

Sure, let's not make a special variable "Linux with ZFS" that a user
only needs to tweak a single line in order to build and distribute.

But we shouldn't prevent users from adding kernel modules to their
initrd, because that is explicitly not a problem from a licensing
standpoint. And if users choose to redistribute the compiled result,
that is their mistake / decision, not ours.

Again, I don't see what is special with this combination, compared to
things like the incompatibility of the OpenSSL and GPL licenses. OpenSSL
could not be distributed linked with GPL code for many years of Guix,
and we didn't combine the licenses ourselves. But it was trivial for
users to do it, even on the command line by using package
transformations. That was okay, and I think this is a similar situation
that is also okay.

To all, remember, my earlier message clarified the distinction between
combination and distribution. I hope further discussion will keep that
distinction in mind, if it is correct. Of course copyright is only
concerned with "copying" and distribution.