Re: would be a wishlist bug against alien, but ...

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Chris Fearnley wrote:
> Corel has improved alien's error handling in the rpm -> deb conversion
> process.  These patches should be looked at by Debian to determine if they
> are useful as they look.  I think they look very useful.  Their virtue
> are given by this comment from the Corel code:
> # Get a list of file locations and check if they conflict with files already
> # installed on a Corel LINUX system.
> # The purpose of this function is to help prevent unknowing users from damaging
> # their system by installing over files that are already installed.

I've looked at these patches extensively in the past. IMHO, they are
worthless for general use. For example, dpkg implements file conflict
checking and so on itself at deb install time, whereas the file conflict
checking in corel's alien is done at package conversion time. But the
converted package may not be installed on the machine it is built on!

> I hesitate to call this a wishlist bug because the file
> /usr/share/alien/corellinux.pm in Corel's version is covered by the
> "Corel Public License" and it may not be compatible with the GPL.
> I'm not a lawyer and whenever a vendor chooses their own licence to
> use for components of GPL software, I assume people with a lawyeristic
> personality need to check it out.  Is it OK because its a library?

I asked about this on -legal sometime this spring and got a confusing
mishmash of answers.

-- 
see shy jo