Recently I got task to do. I’m supposed to check whether withe some FreeBSD boxes managed by HP Poland are associated risks with improper uses according license. What?!?! You probably asked when read improper use according license in context of FreeBSD?
Relax, I’m talking about applications installed via famous :)) FreeBSD ports collection. It turns out there is no licensing info associated with particular ports, so looks like I need to check every entry in /var/db/pkg.
It would be very nice, if every port have License field, and it would be possible to find all GPLed ports, for example like that:
$ make search key=PHP | grep -E "^License: GPL|^Port:|^Path:"
In polish is there some very nice proverb marzenie scietej glowy to express such ideas ;))
But if there will be no easy solution I would be required to write some webby application to store such info (for each port). Then running it over list installed ports from other machine will allow to filter common ports, installed on almost every box. As for geek should be, I’m lazy enough to write automated solution, than doing it by hand.