[packagekit] Handling of License Prompts

[Justin Haygood]

They can, considering they are standard RPMs, but it's a whole legal grey
area.. they didn't agree to any EULA, and the packages (third party non
open-source binaries) can't easily be changed to prompt the user to agree to
them at runtime.

-----Original Message-----
From: packagekit-bounces at lists.freedesktop.org
[mailto:packagekit-bounces at lists.freedesktop.org] On Behalf Of Richard
Hughes
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 4:51 PM
To: PackageKit users and developers list
Subject: Re: [packagekit] Handling of License Prompts

On 10/09/2007, Justin Haygood <jhaygood at reaktix.com> wrote:
> On OpenSUSE, packages (such as Flash Player and Java) can have licenses
that
> must be agreed to when installing a package. How is this to be handled?

Short answer: It's not.
Long answer: I don't think licences should be agreed to at install
time, rather first run-time.

Rationale:

* You can't localise prompts, well, not without passing locale to the
helper, which then breaks fast-user-switching to other locales
* Waiting for a prompt blocks the process. This means other stuff like
scheduled system updates can't complete, and searching no longer works
* We can't do clever things like "fire and forget" to install new
features in programs.

The whole legal grey area of prompting before installing, or asking as
a post-inst is just a crazy bodge in my opinion. Can those packages
not be installed "quietly"?

Richard.
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