[HEADS-UP] Changes in handling package licenses

[Roland Illig <rillig%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Dear pkgsrc users,

up to now, packages that are Open Source or Free Software didn't require 
their license to be specified. This will change very soon. To save you 
from surprises, here are the things that will change:

In the medium term, all packages will have their LICENSE declared. This 
allows you to distinguish about Open Source licenses, and select for 
every license whether you accept it or not.

You probably don't have to change anything in your mk.conf file, as long 
as you always _append_ the licenses to the ACCEPTED_LICENSES variable 
(using "+=" instead of a simple "="). In this case, the Open Source 
licenses will be automatically added to the acceptable licenses.

Only if you explicitly override the ACCEPTED_LICENSES in mk.conf using 
"=" instead of "+=", you may get build failures for packages that 
previously worked because you haven't accepted their licenses. In that 
case, you should either change the "=" to "+=" in mk.conf (which means 
accepting the Open Source licenses) or explicitly add the licenses you 
want to accept to ACCEPTED_LICENSES. You can find more details in the 
file pkgsrc/mk/license.mk.

All other changes are mostly interesting to pkgsrc developers and will 
therefore be discussed on the tech-pkg mailing list, not here.

Any questions?

Roland