Re: Packaging proprietary software

[Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>]

On 9 October 2014 09:03, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:

On that point: It is in poor taste to declare up front that you have no
intention of helping the free software community (which is what it means
to release proprietary software), and then in the same message ask that
same community for help in doing this.

It is possible to release the source to your packaging as open source with instructions on how to download the proprietary code and create the Debian packages. This means you can't distribute the built packages. I have done this. https://github.com/VPAC/tivsm

Another option is to have a deb installer package that downloads the proprietary code at install time. I think the Adobe flash plugin does this. This means you can distribute the "binary" packages, however may not be a good choice if there is no anonymous download or upstream is likely to change the URL.

So it is possible to package proprietary software and help the community in doing so.

--
Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>