Re: Folding@Home Package
On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 02:20:33PM -0400, Zachary Palmer wrote:
> Hello, all. It has been my understanding that the reason that the
> Folding@Home distributed computing software has not been made a Debian
> package is that the license under which it is released does not allow it
> to be free. This software package has pretty much the best reason for
> being closed source that I've encountered; they want to prevent
> falsified results from damaging the research.
<snip>
> Of course, I understand that this means that we can't package up the
> Folding@Home binary.
Debian focuses its resources on create DFSG-free software.
Non-dfsg-free software is also produced by DD's and others.
Also, most Debian users like all kinds of software but prefer DFSG
software. In cases where DFSG software is not possible, Debian provides
a non-free repo and some nice person, also a DD, makes
debian-multimedia.org for most of the patent-encumbered files. There are
also places where folks package debs for convienence, that are not in
Debian, like debian-mentors.net and backports.org. So there are a few
places where you can but deb packages for non-dfsg deb files.
> But if I put together a Debian package that would
> use the preinst script to go fetch the software from Stanford in a way
> similar to how the flashplugin-nonfree package fetches Macrodobe Flash
> 9, would there be any interest?
sure. Although, asking on debian-user would get you a better answer.
> I'd really enjoy a quick, low-hassle
> way to fetch and install Folding@Home on my various computers as a
> service. I see that there is a KDE applet, kfolding, that will handle
> Folding@Home, but it is dependent upon the existence of a KDE session
> (or at least a base KDE installation) and I'd like to install the
> software on my server as well as avoid messing with it if I somehow
> crash my GUI session.
>
> So, in summary, is there anything I should know before I set out on this
> task? And will people use it if I bother?And I'm
I'm sure many folks would like a deb for F@H wether its a wrapper to get
and install it (which may go in main (or contrib?)) or a deb that
contains the actual program packaged to meet Debian's policy guidelines
in non-free.
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