brew list with "License" field - do I have non-free software installed? #10
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I wish to see an overview of all formula I installed and their license. Goal is to see if I installed proprietary / non-free software.
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Replies: 3 comments 6 replies
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The first paragraph of https://docs.brew.sh/License-Guidelines reads:
So if you only use the core tap, your result set is guaranteed to be empty. If you use third-party taps, there's no guarantee that they have
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This doesn't work because there's no verification or requirements for the license field. Multiple known OSS in the default cask repo don't have a license field (see Blender, Gimp, Audacity). Commercial software also fails this test for the same reason. See the recently added Limitless commercial and proprietary SaaS AI service as an example. There's unfortunately no way to check if you're using only OSS software in Homebrew without checking each project's individual license from their own source or website (since commercial and non-licensed software is allowed in casks). |
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Thank you for the confirmation. My point is the selected answer doesn't work because the license field is not required and in addition to proprietary, many open source projects don't even use it. The field is essentially unreliable and not an accurate representation, so either wouldn't be an answer to OP's question, or should be enforced to be present and accurate. |
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The first paragraph of https://docs.brew.sh/License-Guidelines reads:
So if you only use the core tap, your result set is guaranteed to be empty.
If you use third-party taps, there's no guarantee that they have
license
stanzas, but a fairly simple way to get the info you want involvesjq
: