Re: Debian packaging of OpenBoard

Hello Andrea,

thank you for the fast and deep check of our repositories. I've added the header to the file contained on the OpenBoard-Importer repository. In this repository I've not copied the COPYRIGHT LICENSE and README files. If necessary I'll add them just tell me.

For the images your assumption is correct and if there is something to do to clarify this point please tell me. For the fonts I've a doubt as well as I'm not sure that those font are still used on OpenBoard. I'll check this point asap.

OpenBoard-ThirdParty is a repository that is "necessary" to retrieve if you want to build OpenBoard. I need some time to make a little rework on it. It manly contains the source code of xpdf, freetype, quazip, (openssl for Windows only), a library used on Mac Os X as well as some free licensed code from Qt (BSD licensed) . Luca told me that one of the two library have a completely free substitute but I've completely missed this out.

For the last point, the tarball version, I should admit that is now a couple of year that I build only deb package (all done by hand and may be not completely debian compliant). I not even sure to remember exactly what I've to put on the tarball.

The next release, namely OpenBoard 1.02.00 will be release next week.

I'll work on my spare time for the compliance with DFSG principles so don't be angry if the process will take some time.

Suggestions are always welcomed,

Nice one,

Claudio

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 4:40 PM, Andrea Colangelo <warp10@debian.org> wrote:

2014-02-12 15:19 GMT+01:00 Claudio Valerio <claudio.valerio@oe-f.org>:

> mi permetto di risponderti in italiano. È un po' di tempo che non ho più la
> possibilità di farlo allora ne approfitto!

Heh, I can imagine! :) Unfortunately, though, Debian-Edu is an
english-only mailing list. Hope you don't mind If I keep writing in
English, so that everybody can follow the conversation along (and I'll
translate the relevant parts of your email as I answer here). I
suppose we can switch to our native language in the private emails we
will share while working on OpenBoard.

> Più seriamente. Siamo già in contatto con un dev Debian nella persona di
> Luca Capello. L'abbiamo contattato un po' di tempo fa' per avere un'idea
> sulla strada da prendere. Purtroppo abbiamo messo la relazione in pausa a
> causa del contratto che ci legava allo stato francese. Quest'ultimo (come
> alcune persone dello staff interno) non condividono, ancora, l'importanza
> che personalmente porto alla messa in regola del codice.

[Claudio says that he pinged Luca Capello during the development of
sankore, but this liaison is in pause. Further, he says that the
sankore contractor (which is the French Government) didn't care that
much WRT legal parts of releasing code]

> Da qualche settimana ci siano infine liberati del contratto con la Francia
> ed ufficializzato il fork (http://oe-f.org). Il codice sorgente del progetto
> lo puoi trovare su (github
> git@github.com:OpenEducationFoundation/OpenBoard.git,
> git@github.com:OpenEducationFoundation/OpenBoard-ThirdParty.git,
> git@github.com:OpenEducationFoundation/OpenBoard-Importer.git). L'accesso
> dovrebbe essere libero, se non è il caso fammelo sapere avrò sbagliato la
> configurazione.

[They dropped their contract with France and forked OpenBoard. Links
to the repos follow]

Yep, I downloaded all of them, thanks for sharing!

> Per quanto riguarda Open-Sankoré. Lo sviluppo è stato ripreso dai CNDP
> (centro di formazione nazionale francese). Sebbene niente si muova su git
> due nuove versioni sono uscite negli ultimi mesi. Purtroppo non posso dirti
> esattamente come viene gestita la messa a disposizione del codice sorgente
> ma mi sembra che facciano dei commit su una diramazione differente da quella
> principale (master), v2.3.0RC (se non sbaglio).

[WRT sankorè, development continues under an other upstream. No
commits to master anymore, but they released a couple new releases in
the last months, probably they continue on the branch "v.2.3.0RC".]

I see. Well, actually they keep releasing non-free stuff (like the
fonts) there, so it is of small interests to us. I suppose we
should/want to focus our efforts on OpenBoard only.

> Nel nostro caso la diramazione che utilizzo di più è la diramazione
> "develop", mentre "master" viene messa a giorno quando distribuiamo una
> versione.

[Just to say that the "develop" branch is used for development,
"master" is updated when OpenBoard is released.]

Ok, good to know. I gave a deep look to
OpenEducationFoundation/OpenBoard and I'm glad to see that all files
in src/ have a valid header with copyright and license, and non-free
fonts have been abandoned. This is so sweet.

The only issues I found are in resources/library. Several files here
and there have either no header or no copyright or no license, and
this should be fixed ASAP, since this would make OpenBoard
unreleasable by Debian. Further, I saw several minified .js files.
Minifying is great to save space, but is considered non-free by
Debian. Not a big issues though: if you are not willing to do so, we
can deminify them before uploading the source tarball, it's piece of
cake.

Further, I assume that all the images unders resources/ are made by
you and are released under the same license of OpenBoard. If some of
them are not, it should be noted somewhere. Same applies to
resources/fonts/*.pfb.

A few questions: do you plan to release a tarball soon? And with
regard to OpenEducationFoundation/OpenBoard-ThirdParty: is it needed
to build OpenBoard? I have seen no recent commits there.

Thank you so much for your fast answer and for your dedication to make
OpenBoard's code legally-perfect: it's such a shame when great
software can't be delivered to our users just because some headers are
missing.

Best regards,

Andrea.

--
Andrea Colangelo | http://andreacolangelo.com
Debian Developer <warp10@debian.org> | Ubuntu Developer <warp10@ubuntu.com>