Based on the fedora comment I don't think the license allows us to redistribute the binaries.

It just means that the use restriction is incompatible with Fedora’s licence policy. I think it is still compatible with our lenient definition of unfreeRedistributable, which in any case does not cause us to redistribute binaries (and never should; cf. my standard spiel about how we would need a specific list of permitted unfree licences).

I think it is still compatible with our lenient definition of unfreeRedistributable, which in any case does not cause us to redistribute binaries

The docs say that we would distribute it then https://github.com/SuperSandro2000/nixpkgs/blob/a1ddda46fa838b99460ae4594e3e382231ac1e8b/doc/stdenv/meta.chapter.md#liblicensesunfreeredistributable-unfree-redistributable-liblicensesunfreeredistributable-unfree-redistributable

Thanks for picking this up!

Thinking more on the discussion in #328698, I do think that there's actually a matryoshka of two licenses here:

1. The full license, which is the one that the original UnRAR source code comes with, and which includes the problematic "you must remove UnRAR files from your storage devices" clause;
2. Just the 2nd paragraph, which is less burdened.

Some projects have elected to include the code only along with the 2nd paragraph, which does not reference the rest of the license, so it wouldn't be quite correct to lump them together.

Notably, the "2nd paragraph only" variation does look like it should allow redistribution without issues.

The docs say that we would distribute it then https://github.com/SuperSandro2000/nixpkgs/blob/a1ddda46fa838b99460ae4594e3e382231ac1e8b/doc/stdenv/meta.chapter.md#liblicensesunfreeredistributable-unfree-redistributable-liblicensesunfreeredistributable-unfree-redistributable

Weird. The docs lie, I guess.

Some projects have elected to include the code only along with the 2nd paragraph, which does not reference the rest of the license, so it wouldn't be quite correct to lump them together.

IIRC it’s actually that the licence changed to become more burdensome later on (otherwise any project cutting out parts of the licence would be committing a copyright violation and be less redistributable), but I forget the exact details.

Weird. The docs lie, I guess.

I think it is intentional. Some programs are unfree (as in open source free) but we are allowed to distribute them.

I think it is intentional. Some programs are unfree (as in open source free) but we are allowed to distribute them.

We don’t do it. See #83884, and #83884 (comment) for why we shouldn’t do it as a blanket policy separate to any ideological concerns.

Then we should update the docs to be correct. Since I seem to lack some knowledge here I leave it up to the people that are more familiar with licenses.