Quoting Steve M. Robbins (2014-03-11 07:11:36)
> On March 11, 2014 10:50:10 AM Paul Wise wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
>>> I'd love to see clarification of the ftp-team's position on
>>> obfuscated files in source packages, preferably in an official
>>> location for future reference.
>
> Recalling that the context of the question was whether "it is
> acceptable to leave ${some file} in a tarball if it is unused" ...
Yes. Leaving in tarball (as opposed to repackaging tarball to exclude a
file) relates to *source* package, not produced binary packages.
>> Source missing
>>
>> Your package contains files that need source but do not have it.
>> These include PDF and PS files in the documentation, or
>> auto-generated files.
>
> ... I guess if a file is not needed for the build, then that file does
> not "need source" either.
Whether it is needed for build or not is related to production and
Debian redistribution of *binary* packages.
>> Generated files
>>
>> Your package contains generated files (such as compressed .js
>> libraries) without corresponding original form. They're not
>> considered as the preferred form of modification,
>
> Nor would it need to be modified, so it shouldn't matter that it's not
> the "preferred form for modification".
>
>
> I can understand that it is nicer if upstream can be persuaded to
> clean things up and not do either of the above. I also realize that
> some folks may prefer to re-pack a tarball for "cleanliness"
> objectives. But are you really suggesting a distributable but "non
> source" file in the tarball can't simply be ignored? What objective
> would that serve?
I believe it is exactly the case that Debian do not allow
(re)distribution of "source" which is not in the preferred form of
editing.
Debian have a certain definition of Freedoms that we uphold which is
largely compatible with other parts of the FOSS community, but not
always identical - which leads to oddities like this need to repackage
and strip parts of code that is properly licensed by upstream but still
do not fit our definition of how things are acceptable to _us_ to
distribute.
When approaching upstreams about this, we should be careful to not try
impose our World views onto them, but only share with them how we treat
their code that they have chosen to share with us, and how it would be
more convenient for us that they share it slightly different. They are
commonly not doing anything "wrong", just by a different freedom logic
than ours.
- Jonas
--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
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