Corporate pressure

[Nils Philippsen]

On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 14:03, david paeme wrote:
> wouldn't it be a good idea to include some kind of license acceptance
> mechanism into apt/yum/rpm? 

No (see comments about unattended installs etc.).

> for example, to get adobe acrobat to install, the user would get a
> prompt to accept the adobe license, which he can (and the software
> installs), or not (so, it doesn't install...).

One could do it like Netscape did (already mentioned) and/or have the
administrator append something like "I accept this license" to some EULA
file. The app can check for that at startup and if neither the user
accepted the license "by clicking" nor the admin by "signing" the EULA
accepted the license, bring up the EULA dialog -- mentioning something
like "you can accept this license for yourself or for all of your users
by appending the line 'I accept this license' (without quotes) to the
end of /var/lib/myproprietaryapp/eula". The app could then verify the
integrity of the eula file and the existence of the confirmation blurb.

There is absolutely no need to change packaging tools for this.

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."     -- B. Franklin, 1759
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