User:Grknight/Drafts/ACCEPT LICENSE

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( Proposed new subsection to Handbook:Parts/Installation/Base#Configuring_Portage )

Optional: Configuring the ACCEPT_LICENSE variable

All of the Gentoo packages are tagged with the license(s) the package falls under. This allows users to select software by specific licenses or groups of licenses prior to installing it.

Portage uses the ACCEPT_LICENSE variable to determine which packages to allow without prompting the user for the licenses previously accepted. Exceptions can be made per-package in /etc/portage/package.license as well.

The license groups defined in the Gentoo repository, managed by the Gentoo Licenses project, are:

Group Name Description
@GPL-COMPATIBLE GPL compatible licenses approved by the Free Software Foundation [a_license 1]
@FSF-APPROVED Free software licenses approved by the FSF (includes @GPL-COMPATIBLE)
@OSI-APPROVED Licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative [a_license 2]
@MISC-FREE Misc licenses that are probably free software, i.e. follow the Free Software Definition [a_license 3] but are not approved by either FSF or OSI
@FREE-SOFTWARE Combines @FSF-APPROVED, @OSI-APPROVED and @MISC-FREE
@FSF-APPROVED-OTHER FSF-approved licenses for "free documentation" and "works of practical use besides software and documentation" (including fonts)
@MISC-FREE-DOCS Misc licenses for free documents and other works (including fonts) that follow the free definition [a_license 4] but are NOT listed in @FSF-APPROVED-OTHER
@FREE-DOCUMENTS Combines @FSF-APPROVED-OTHER and @MISC-FREE-DOCS
@FREE Combines @FREE-SOFTWARE and @FREE-DOCUMENTS
@BINARY-REDISTRIBUTABLE Includes @FREE and other freely distributable closed source software which do not have an End-User License Agreement (EULA)
@EULA License agreements that try to take away your rights. These are more restrictive than "all-rights-reserved" or require explicit approval
  1. ↑ https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
  2. ↑ https://www.opensource.org/licenses
  3. ↑ https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  4. ↑ https://freedomdefined.org/

Gentoo comes with a predefined value in the profiles, for example:

user $portageq envvar ACCEPT_LICENSE
* -@EULA

This can be customized system wide by changing /etc/portage/make.conf to, e.g. only accept FSF and OSI, and similar, "Free" software:

FILE /etc/portage/make.confCustomizing ACCEPT_LICENSE
ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE"

Per package overrides can then be added if necessary and desired, for example:

FILE /etc/portage/package.license/kernelSample license acceptance
sys-kernel/gentoo-sources linux-firmware
sys-kernel/linux-firmware freedist linux-firmware no-source-code
sys-firmware/intel-microcode intel-ucode
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