get rid of nauty's stupid interactive license agreement in the optional spkg install

[williamstein]

I hate stuff like this:

*     B. D. McKay, nauty User's Guide (Version 2.4),
*         http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/nauty/.
Do you accept nauty's license agreement, listed above? (y/n)

and as an argument against it note that a _lot_ of stuff in optional isn't gpl compatible, is binary only, etc., but we never have any explicit agreements like the above for anything else.

Component: packages: optional

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/4890

[sagetrac-mabshoff]

comment:1

This was done explicitly because Nauty is non-free. I would much rather move non-free stuff to its own repo than to just install it without pointing out the license.

Cheers,

Michael

[wdjoyner]

comment:2

Is this in gap_packages* only? If so, would be easiest to simply remove grape?

[sagetrac-mabshoff]

comment:3

Replying to @wdjoyner:

Is this in gap_packages* only? If so, would be easiest to simply remove grape?

What is "this"?

We are talking about spkg-install of the nauty.spkg.

Cheers,

Michael

[wdjoyner]

comment:4

Oh.

I was looking here
http://wiki.sagemath.org/optional_packages_available_for_SAGE
and not here
http://www.sagemath.org/packages/optional/
:-)

[williamstein]

comment:5

I've put a new spkg here:

http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/was/patches/nauty-24b7.p1.spkg

It does much more than just fix the problem cited in the title of this ticket. It also:

• Reorganize the spkg to the format we've standardized on.
• Create Mercurial repository.
• Make the install process way more robust with much better error checking.
• Support MAKE environment variable.

To test it you'll also need to use

export SAGE_CHECK=1

to have it run its test suite.

[williamstein]

comment:6

some comments:

1. David Joyner asked about gap, since Nauty is also in Gap-packages, so it also gets installed there. Of course there, there is no stupid interactive message.

2. I know that the reason for the message is because it is not a "GPL-compatible license". However, that can be said for several of the things in optional (gap-packages, openssl, kash3, graphviz), but none of the others have a stupid interactive message.

3. Even Debian doesn't have stupid interactive license agreements. They have a "non-free" repo that every normal user justs adds (it's very easy to add), and henceforth one automatically has those packages available by default.

4. Why distinguish between GPL-compatible and non-GPL-compatible for whether or not we have an interactive message?

Even if we put things in a different repository, it won't in any way effect the user experience, since install_package(...) just queries all repositories. It will make management of repositories more difficult.

I view half the point of optional as being a place where we can put non-GPL-compatible code like nauty, but for which it is still very easy for users to install it.

[sagetrac-mabshoff]

comment:7

I would still not call this interactive error message "stupid" since it was done deliberately. Nauty is not only non-free, but its license prohibits its use for works involving primarily military applications, so this is not about non-GPL vs. GPL. If we also ship it in the optional gap.spkg it looks like we will need to do some auditing there, too.

Cheers,

Michael