ftpmaster review reply Re: Comments regarding chroma_1.18-1_multi.changes
Hi. Thanks for looking at this package.
Because I believe in Debian's value of transparency I decided to CC
this reply to a public list. I didn't think there was a better list
than -devel. Readers of -devel will find references etc. below [1].
Sean Whitton writes ("Comments regarding chroma_1.18-1_multi.changes"):
> From reading work/resources/README, it seems to me that the
> reverse-engineerings of old games and the conversion scripts need to go into
> contrib, because they're useless without a copy of the original ROMs of those
> games?
I'm quite surprised by this comment.
Firstly, everything in that directory is completely DFSG-free in
itself.
Secondly, almost all of its contents are input files and scripts which
are actually used by the main build system to process the DFSG-free
input files (svgs, etc.) into the files which are shipped in the
.deb. So an integral part of the source code for the DFSG-free .deb.
The only thing which is useless without non-free ROMs is the script
resources/browser/convert2chroma.pl [2]. Obviously therefore this
script is not run at build time and is not shipped in the .deb.
The difficulty you are having here seems to be simply that this one
DFSG-free script, not shipped in any .deb, and not run during the
package build, is not useful as part of a completely-DFSG-free
workflow.
Are you really telling me that we have to strip out from the *source
package*, fully DFSG-free ancillary files which are shipped for
convenience by upstream in the same source tree ? Merely because they
are not used in Debian and don't ahve fully Free uses ?
By that rule any script (or maybe even documentation) in any source
package which is there to help work with proprietary data or on
proprietary systems would have to be thrown out (and the corresponding
source package laundered).
I don't see how this would benefit our users or protect Debian or
anything. And there must surely be many contrary examples of this in
Debian. It is very common for upstreams to provide ancillary stuff in
source packages which we in Debian don't use or ship. [3] They do
this for everyone's convenience and it causes no trouble. Until now :-/.
I hope my explanation is sufficient to get this package accepted.
Thanks,
Ian.
[1] I am replying here to ftpmaster comments on source package
"chroma" which I uploaded as sponsor on the 18th of January. Simon
Tatham, CC'd, is the upstream author and Debian maintainer. The
un-ACCEPTed source package can be obtained by Debian Members with
dgit --for-push clone chroma
as tag archive/debian/1.18-1 (at least unless it is REJECTed).
[2] I have doubled checked this with Simon, the upstream author.
[3] Should we DFSG-launder the Windows support out of our compiler
source packages ? That sounds like fun.
--
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
Pronouns: they/he. If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk,
that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
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