License information of "non-free" software are not described

Bug #1663872 reported by ryukun
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-software (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Many software are tagged in Ubuntu Software (a.k.a. Ubuntu Software Center) as "non-free" like VLC or hexchat.

Unfortunately meaning of "non-free" is not explained as far as I can see.

Does it mean "free software" as opposite of "proprietary"? Or does it mean it requires a price to pay to install and use?

Furthermore, I cannot see any license information of such software. As they are listed as "non-free", a user might think that they are closed source software. However in fact vlc and hexchat are open source software. This is misleading.

I suggest adding short and descriptive license information. It should always be noted if a software is open source or not. In addition, if a software is under a common "free software" license such as GPL or Apache it also can be stated. This would provide users with valuable and easy to understand information about software he/she is about to install.

I also suggest adding repository information of any software. Is it in "main", "universe", "restricted" or "multiverse"? This would provide users with meaningful extra information.

Ubuntu Release: 16.10
software-center:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 16.01+16.04.20160420
  Version table:
     16.01+16.04.20160420 500
        500 http://tr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu yakkety/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://tr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu yakkety/universe i386 Packages

ryukun (ryukun)
description: updated
description: updated
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

The 'hexchat' and 'vlc' apps you see are snaps and there is a bug with how the license information is presented.

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1555567, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

affects: software-center (Ubuntu) → gnome-software (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Matthias Klumpp (ximion) wrote :

This information exists - just click on the "non-free" tag to see an explanation.

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

Matthias, clicking the non-free tag on Ubuntu 16.04 or 16.10 doesn't do anything.

Revision history for this message
oneworld (opensourcer) wrote :

below the 'non free' , its shows a text "This software may contain non-free components"

Sepcific in Ubuntu Studio 16.04.1, default package manager 'Software 3.2' it shows two VLC media players. One is a 120MB download with no reviews, other is the original approx 5MB download.

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

oneworld (opensourcer), what is the exact version of gnome-software installed on your computer?

You can find this by running this command in a terminal:
apt policy gnome-software

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