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Re: Bug#762228: RFS: ufoai-music review



On 20.09.2014 09:57, Tobias Frost wrote:
[...]
>> First of all I'd like to suggest that you start with the ufoai source
>> package first because it contains the ufoai_copyright.py script and
>> other information that are useful to understand the packaging of
>> UFO:AI's data packages.
> 
> My reasoning is, that because of every data package has its own
> orig.tar, they need to be crafted in a way to so that they will
> be -- individually looked at -- reach Debian quality requirements. 

I still don't see why the current copyright file does not meet Debian's
quality requirements. Instead of one huge 900 MB -data package, the game
data was simply split into three different source packages. This makes
it much easier to fix bugs without having to upload all data files every
time.

I would like to stress: The source packages are not independent of each
other, they belong together. It is due to mere technical reasons that
the -data was split. In my opinion we are in full compliance with
Debian's Policy because

- we state in d/copyright that the game data was split due to technical
  reasons
- we use a reproducible and convenient way to determine all copyright
  information.
- the copyright file is machine-readable and every file in each source
  package is covered by an license paragraph in debian/copyright.

Thus the whole copyright file is accurate.

[...]
> Admitting, upstream is exemplary in case of tracking of its licenses
> (also with the scope for Debian!), and it really helps to automate this
> to get a skeleton dep5 file. 

Indeed. UFO:AI is an exemplary and excellent free software game and its
developers care a lot about tracking licenses.

> However -- as with the output of licensecheck of the devscripts -- the
> output needs to be checked and compared to *every* files in the source.

Right. This is already achieved. Which license information are incorrect?

> The LICENSE file may (and have) also errors: For example there are files
> in this files with no copyright holder attributed. Or, there are URLs
> attributed as copyright owners. How does the script handle this? In the
> end this leads to wrongly attributed files that will either go unnoticed
> (so Debian is violating copyright law) or lead to an FTP Master reject. 

First of all the whole game is licensed under GPL-2+ and is copyright
The UFO:AI team. In addition the LICENSES file contains all information
about individual game data licenses that diverge from this general
assumption.

One line in LICENSES looks like that:

filename | license | author | source

base/maps/africa/af_empty6a.map | GNU General Public License 2.0 or
later | Holger 'ShipIt' Gellrich | base/maps/africa/af_empty6.map

The script splits all fields by the | delimiter and maps all filenames
to their corresponding licenses and copyright holders. If there is no
one mentioned under author one may assume that this is always a work by
the UFO:AI team.

> 
> To make it clear: I require an 100% accurate d/copyright and this is one
> of the few points that are not subject to negotiations.

Absolutely. Could you elaborate on where a file is not accurately
addressed by copyright format 1.0?

[...]
>> I believe we shouldn't make the process of creating debian/copyright
>> even more painful and I think that a reference to
>> /usr/share/common-licenses is more than enough for the most widely used
>> free software license.
> 
> I disagree. As said above, d/copyright is important. Yes, it is tedious
> to create it the first time and there are more exciting things to do,
> but it is a necessity to be done and to do it right.

Absolutely agreed. But can you point me to examples where the short
reference to /usr/share/common-licenses was deemed not appropriate by
the FTP team?

> The policy means you should not quote the verbatim license, but it is
> common practice to quote the first 3 paragraphs. 

No, that's not true. A lot of maintainers write standalone paragraphs
for common licenses exactly as I do.

> Otherwise we'll introduce fuzziness.  Consider License GPL-2+
> You refer to the GPL-2 file, which makes it non-obvious that you have
> the "or later" option in place. For the causal user, its not
> self-explaining what the "+" means.

Copyright format 1.0 clearly defines short names and keywords. GPL-2 and
GPL-2+ are well defined and unambiguous.

https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/

It is common practice and knowledge that GPL-2 refers to the GNU General
Public license 2 and GPL-2+ refers to the same license but includes the
"or later" clause.

> Please add the few lines, I consider it not enough to just have the
> reference. 

Ok, that's fine. I completely understand that it is your prerogative as
a developer to determine what you consider suitable for an upload.
However I have touched more than 100 source packages already and I am
sure that this is not what Policy demands and merely an arbitrary
requirement. Even the rules for copyright format 1.0 state for the
License field:

"Otherwise, this field should either include the full text of the
license(s) or include a pointer to the license file under
/usr/share/common-licenses."

A pointer is really enough.

[...]
>> d/watch just checks for new releases. It is far more convenient to work
>> with the upstream Git repository hence I have created get-orig-source
>> targets in src:ufoai.
> 
> As said in the beginning, I disagree. Each package needs to induvidually
> fulfill the quality requirments.
> 
> If the watchfile does not retrieve the source, you need to have a
> get-orig-source in d/rules and document who to get source for that
> package in README.Source.

But there is a README.source file in ufoai-music and it points to
src:ufoai where you can find all get-orig-source targets to retrieve the
original sources? Why is this not sufficient?

> You can recommend there to go ufoai and 
> execute get-orig-source there to avoid double downloads, but I expect 
> that this will be possible also without downloading another source
> package.

Sure I could duplicate the same code for every source package but what
would we gain? Quality? Reduction of maintenance work?

> (BTW, As you are repacking, so you should add the suffix +repack to the
> upstream version; this makes clear that you won't find the tarball
> upstream)

Yes, but strictly spoken we don't repack the sources. We just use the
Git repository directly.
Therefore I think +repack would be misleading.

Markus


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