Re: Open-source library proxying to a closed-source library (ITP #679504)

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Christophe-Marie Duquesne wrote:

>                                         The purpose is to provide
> entry points for Osi [1], a library that lets you write solver
> agnostic code. Osi links to my library, and at runtime, it takes care
> of finding, dlopening and forwarding calls to the closed source
> library. This way, you don't actually need the solver whenever you
> compile Osi, and your build can use the targeted solver whenever it is
> found on the system.

Thanks for asking.

Others' answers about how to get a free header seemed sensible to me.
Best to use as little creative content from the proprietary header as
possible --- remove parameter names, alphabetize by function name,
etc.  Make sure you document how the header is produced so it can be
easily updated and so others can easily verify it has no nonfunctional
content.  Best of all if you can write the header from scratch based
on a specification someone else has written.

But that is beside the point when answering the main question:

[...]
> The question I have for you is very simple: What would it take for
> debian to accept my package (if it can ever be distributed)?

This package would not be eligible for inclusion in Debian until there
is a free implementation of the solver interface you are linking to.

If you find a way to make a free version of the header, it would
presumably be a candidate for contrib.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan