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Re: JOGL in Debian



On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 01:37:40 +0100 Sylvestre Ledru wrote:

> Hello,

Hi!

> 
> I am one of the developer of Scilab. We are rewriting the GUI from
> scratch using Java (Swing) and JOGL.
> Since we prefer to have Scilab packages available (especially because
> Scilab is going to change his  license to a free one),

That's really good news!
Which license are you considering to switch to?

> we need to have
> JOGL in Debian. I did a debian package of the latest version of JOGL
> ready to be incorporated in Debian.
> However, it seems that there is an issue highlighted by Fedora and
> Robert Schuster.
> A part of the code of JOGL is under the SGI Free License B. The FSF
> says that it is not a free license [1]. It is why Anthony Green
> removed it from Fedora.
> The "defense" of the dev of JOGL, Ken Russell [2] and Tom Marble [3]
> (both from Sun) is that both Fedora and Debian are shipping Mesa with
> the *exact same code* with the same license.

Firstoff, from a technical point of view, shipping the *exact same code*
in two different packages does not seem to be a good idea.
Could this duplication of code be avoided?
Is it possible to link or otherwise use the code included in the mesa
package, rather than packaging another copy of it?

Anyway, from a DFSG-freeness point of view, that license is indeed
problematic: see http://bugs.debian.org/368560 for the details.
Unfortunately, there seems to have been too little progress on this bug
so far.

> 
> If we are shipping SGI Free B code in debian, I guess we can accept
> JOGL in Debian ?
> 
> What is your opinion(s) on this ?

I don't think that the existence of a bug should be seen as a
justification for adding another bug...


Disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP.


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