Re: Tomcat 4.0.1 in Debian?

[Rick Lutowski <rick@jreality.com>]

Arnaud Vandyck wrote:

> especially when you (i think) argue that jakarta is not responsible to
> provide  a  full distribution  and  it's  user  or package  maintainer
> responsability  to   download  the   different  jars  needed   by  the
> application (in our  case tomcat4).

By 'package maintainer' I assume you mean 'debian dselect package
maintainer', and not just someone who creates a custom tarball or 
jar containing the non-free stuff required by Tomcat.  Yes?


> ...
> you),  how about  an installer  package? Users  will download  all the
> needed packages and the installer  package will unzip and move them to
> /usr/share/java  with  all  the  rest   of  the  jars  in  the  Debian
> distribution.

If deselect package is what you mean, then your statement about
it's user responsibility to download [non-free] jars makes sense, 
but saying "or [deselect] package maintainer's responsibility"
may not make sense, depending on the reason _why_ this responsibility 
gets pushed off jakarta onto the debian team or user:

Could it be the reason the user has this responsibility is due 
to Sun's (or other vendor) license restrictions on redistribution?  
If so, then  creating non-free deselect packages might be useless,
even if a volunteer is found to do it, because these too might violate 
the vendor's license.  I say 'mignt' because this depends entirely 
on which vendor jars are involved -- in the case of Sun, their license 
differs with each product, as we know.  Things would be clarified if 
someone could please list the non-free packages involved.

<place list here>

If the above list includes Sun (or other vendor) code with licensing
that restricts redistribution, then the only solution other than
give up (which makes life hard on the Tomcat 4 user, esp non-Java 
user who thinks jars hold pickles but still wants to use Tomcat) is 
to try to get permission from the vendor.  Maybe jakarta has tried, 
I don't know.  Even if they have and were turned down, a lobby effort 
from a large number of users might be successful where a single request 
from jakarta was not.  But this is jumping ahead.  First, it would help 
to know exactly what the real problem is.

Is the problem that vendor licensing prohibits redistribution, and 
if so, for exactly which vendor/jar packages? 

Rick
-- 
                  Rick
                  Lutowski
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