Re: When will KDE and Debian get together?
On Mon, 29 May 2000, Joey Hess wrote:
>
> Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> > But my impression is that not every debianized source tree can be used with
> > the debuild command. For example, can you use debuild with the debianized
> > pine source tree that is distributed with Debian? When I built it a number
> > of weeks ago I recall some other means was documented for building the debs
> > so I used that instead. Thus my impression is there are a variety of
> > debianized source tree formats. I view this as a weakness. Thus, I would
> > be happy to be proved wrong by you on this issue.
>
> Well you're wrong. dpkg-buildpackage is required to be able to build
> every package. There is extensive documentation and policy about what a
> debianized source package much look like.
>
> But of course you wouldn't know, since you're clearly jumping to
> conclusions and blabbering without doing even the most rudimentary fact
> checking.
I think you are getting way too hot about this. It is clear from the above
that once you said politely in your previous e-mail that I was wrong that I
was asking for your help on this (that is what "I would be happy to be
proved wrong" means). So you could have easily let me know the truth on
this minor side issue with something polite, but instead you did yourself a
disservice by going way overboard in such a public manner.
I have had some experience at building binary packages from source rpms, but
I have switched to Debian now so I am anxious to learn how to build binary
packages under Debian. So I did read the pine README file when I built the
debs for that package. There is no mention of debuild or dpkg-buildpackage
there. Instead only dpkg-source and debian/rules. I have also started to
read the debianized source-package documentation, and it seems to me the
source package documentation is a mixed bag with some referring to older or
lower-level tools (which seems to be what the pine debianized source README
was referring to) and some to debuild or dpkg-buildpackage. So there may
well be an official requirement to use debuild or dpkg-buildpackage, but
the general documentation and also the debianized pine documentation has
not caught up completely with this.
>
> > To add some
> > credibility to your argument you have thrown in "distribute binaries to
> > others". Of course, if such distribution occurred a whole set of GPL rules
> > kicks in, but I think this is a non-issue since few if any Debian users will
> > actually do this once they have built KDE on their own system.
>
> That doesn't matter. It's an essential part of Debian's concept of free
> software. It's not some requirement we threw in at the last minute.
The Debian website I was referred to before speaks of prohibiting only the
binary distribution of KDE. In fact there is a statement there
(http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008) "Of course, the source can be
freely published, since there is no problem until it is combined with the Qt
libraries, and their conflicting licence." It is clear from the context
there that the problem they are discussing is subsequent distribution of the
binary.
>
> > You
> > indeed may want to supress KDE source distribution via Debian for emotional
> > reasons
>
> I take extreme exception to this. FYI, if you would bother to *go back
> and look at the history*, I happened to be (at significant personal cost; KDE
> was megabuggy 2 or 3 years ago) maintaining KDE *in Debian* when others
> discovered the license incompatability. I reluctantly pulled it, becuase this
> was indeed a problem.
My personal apologies for the "emotional" above. I didn't mean in any way
to annoy you with it, and I should have thought some more before sending it
off. A less perjorative way to say it would have been "non-license" reasons.
I was well aware you have contributed an enormous amount to Debian just by
looking at the Debian web pages. Thus, I am quite willing to listen to your
views if expressed politely. I did try to be polite to you, but obviously I
should have thought of a better substitute for "emotional".
>
> If you must continue casting unifnormed aspersions on me and others, I
> personally have no further desire to communicate with you.
>
Again, I think this is much too strong a response. To answer the principal
concern I have raised, all that is required is a polite pointer to the
relevant place where the KDE source distribution policy of Debian has been
presented. With the aid of others in the Debian community I have found one
such site for you. Has the Debian policy changed since that statement
(http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008) that source distribution was "no
problem"?
To me your argument against source distribution is not clear because you
have mixed in the "distribute binaries to others" which is largely only a
concern for binary distribution. Surely this is a minor problem if it exists
at all for source distribution? When I build pine debs from debianized
source I certainly have no intention of distributing them to anyone else,
and I believe this would be true for virtually every ordinary Debian user
who built KDE debs on their machine. Especially if Debian specifically
raised the issue with them, and let them know distributing KDE binaries they
created on their machine would not be consistent with the official Debian
interpretation of the GPL.
If you are arguing that Debian should refuse to distribute any GPLed source
which has the *potential* to be used inappropriately by a small minority of
users, then I think this pre-judgement of what a small minority of your
users might do is an extremely dangerous policy. It smacks of prior
restraint on your users because you don't trust them to follow the Debian
guidelines. Thus, I am glad your view does not currently officially prevail
with Debian at least according to the Debian web site referred to above.
Alan W. Irwin
email: irwin@beluga.phys.uvic.ca
phone: 250-727-2902 FAX: 250-721-7715
snail-mail:
Dr. Alan W. Irwin
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8W 3P6
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