Re: Tramp rclone

[Michael Albinus]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

Hi Richard,

> I see an ethical question here.  Is the rclone program free?

As Eli said already, rclone uses the MIT license.

> If so, how does it access Google Drive?
> Does it dynamically load any nonfree software from the Google server?
> If so, it would not be acceptable to suggest users use rclone.

Google Drive authentication is performed by the OAuth 2.0 protocol. This
does not require to download software from the Google server at runtime.

I've cloned the rclone software from its git repository
https://github.com/ncw/rclone.git. The OAuth 2.0 client software is
located in subdirectory rclone/vendor/golang.org/x/oauth2. It is
copied from the Golang project as far as I understand. But all files are
distributed with the rclone sources; no software needs to be downloaded
at runtime from Google Servers.

Best regards, Michael.