Re: Fwd: igraph

[Manuel Prinz <manuel@debian.org>]

Am Mittwoch, den 16.09.2009, 16:47 +0200 schrieb Mathieu Malaterre:
> Sure thing. The files that do not have license headers either come
> from external sources or they are autogenerated.
> 
> 1. Should I care about generated files or can I leave them as is?

Usually, there's no problem with generated files with ftp-masters,
though documenting in debian/copyright that these files are
auto-generated might help. Technically, those files do have a license.
Some systems have an exception for relicensing them to whatever license
you want. In Open MPI, for example, the files generated by the autotools
are relicensed under the upstream license, IIRC. Autotools allow that.
I'm not sure for f2c though, but given the fact the igraph is not the
only package in Debian using it, it should be OK.

Even if ftp-masters would reject the package on that basis (I highly
doubt that), you could delete all auto-generated files, repack, and
recreate them during build. This circumvents the problem but complicates
matters and is probably the reason why distributing auto-generated files
that are not explicitly named in debian/copyright are usually not a
problem.

Someone may correct me if they've had different experiences.

Best regards
Manuel