Subject: Re: bug#61950: [PATCH] lint: Add 'copyleft' checker.

From: Antero Mejr <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2023 21:56:20 +0000

Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> writes:

> I think that goes against the spirit of the GNU project: it's a tool
> that helps finding licensing concerns for proprietary software, with the
> end goal of weeding out GPL components.

I see this completely differently: this is a harm-reduction tool for
those who would violate GPL, possibly unknowingly. By adding compliance
auditing abilities to Guix, developers can avoid that.

> I think I'd rather not see this tool in Guix, but I think it could live
> happily as a channel or as an extension.

Yes I am making this patch (and a couple other compliance features) into
Guix extensions out-of-tree. I would like to upstream the extensions as
a package when they are ready, since the extensions would be FOSS. So I
think this issue can be closed.

> We may be better off if no such
> tool exists and more companies embrace the idea that is GPL instead of
> helping them spot GPL dependencies so they can rewrite them under some
> non-copyleft license.

Making companies rewrite GPL software is a good thing. It forces them to
pay programmers, then those programmers can contribute to Guix in the
evenings :-). Not many people can work on open source full-time,
unfortunately. That said I understand the concerns with merging this
patch, thank you both for taking the time to look at it.