Carrying downstream patches where bugfix submitter declines CLA

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Guillem Jover writes ("Re: Debian i386 architecture now requires a 686-class processor"):
> I suppose this is related to unconditional SSE2 requirement in new Qt
> libraries, (bugs #792594, #794739), for which I thought I had clarified
> the conditions and for which I've provided patches already, but also for
> which I'm not willing to sign the CLA.

I went and looked at the bug report for #792594.  (Added to CC,
Subject line changed.)

AFAICT the objection from the maintainer is that they do not want to
do the work to forward-port the patch to new versions.  But it seems
that Guillem is willing to do this work - and has indeed done it for
several versions.

To the QT maintainers: would you please reconsider applying this
patch, on the understanding that if it fails to apply you are of
course at liberty to drop it again, and reopen this bug (so that
Guillem and others know that the patch needs to be reworked) ?

That would avoid us having to have a big argument about what I think
is an important point of principle.


(Context:

I think Guillem is right not to want to sign the QT CLA.  I wouldn't
sign that CLA either.  I don't think Debian contributors should be
required to submit to such asymmetric licensing setups.

Software that Debian is not able to modify without submitting to
asymmetric licensing is not DFSG-Free.  And by "able to modify" I mean
"able to modify, in practice, in the usual way".

Licensing should not be a barrier to proper development of the code by
Debian's contributors.

As a consequence I think that where a package's upstream insists on a
CLA we dislike, it is the responsibility of those who sponsor the
package's inclusion in Debian to carry, and forward port, good patches
which are provided by non-CLA-signing Debian contributors.

So IMO what I suggest above is actually quite a big compromise.)


> I think the same is affecting Chromium, which I'll need to fix too.
> I've got local packages for the Qt Declarative stuff which I could
> publish if there's demand.

Thanks for your work.  I hope we can get it into Debian.


Thanks,
Ian.