The PolicyKit command-line tools are licensed to you under the GNU
-General Public License version 2.
+General Public License either version 2 of the License, or (at your
+option) any later version.
-libpolkit is licensed to you under your choice of the Academic Free
-License version 2.1, or the GNU General Public License version 2.
+The PolicyKit libraries (libpolkit, libpolkit-grant, libpolkit-dbus)
+are licensed to you under your choice of the Academic Free License
+version 2.1, or the GNU General Public License either version 2 of the
+License, or (at your option) any later version.
-Both licenses are included here. Some individual source code files
-and/or binaries may be under the GPL only or under the LGPL.
+Both licenses are included here. Some individual source code files
+and/or binaries may be under the GPL only.
Each source code file is marked with the proper copyright information.
-
The Academic Free License
v. 2.1
<title>About</title>
<para>
- PolicyKit is a toolkit for defining and handling the policy that
- allows unprivileged processes to speak to privileged processes:
- It is a framework for centralizing the decision making process
- with respect to granting access to privileged operations for
- unprivileged applications. PolicyKit is specifically targeting
- applications in rich desktop environments on multi-user
- UNIX-like operating systems.
+ PolicyKit is an application-level toolkit for defining and
+ handling the policy that allows unprivileged processes to speak
+ to privileged processes: It is a framework for centralizing the
+ decision making process with respect to granting access to
+ privileged operations for unprivileged applications. PolicyKit
+ is specifically targeting applications in rich desktop
+ environments on multi-user UNIX-like operating systems. It does
+ not imply or rely on any exotic kernel features.
</para>
</sect1>
- <sect1>
+ <sect1 id="polkit-spec-history">
<title>History and Prior Art</title>
<para>
<title>Defining the Problem</title>
<para>
- There's a couple of problems with the status quo
+ There's a couple of problems with the mechanisms described in
+ <xref linkend="polkit-spec-history"/>.
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
The way most people use pam-console and sudo is
fundamentally broken. Full-fledged GTK+ or Qt applications
- as the super user which means that millions of line of
+ run as the super user which means that millions of line of
code (including code such as image loaders that
historically have lots of security problems) runs
privileged. This is in direct violation of the well-known
Without a centralized framework, access control
configuration is often scattered throughout the system
which makes it hard for system administrators to grasp how
- to configure the system.
+ to configure the system. There's literally a bunch of
+ different configuration files all with different formats
+ and semantics.
</para>
</listitem>