Thorsten Glaser wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2015, Martin Steghöfer wrote:the interface issue again. Because no matter how well we replace the implementation, if we can't use the interfaces or have to "cripple" them, we don't have a fix.We can just reimplement them, since we control all packages that go into Debian anyway. Formal instance on legal matters is ftpmasters; feel free to contact them.
Sure, replacing the interfaces with our own ones (or the free ones from freehep) and patching all reverse dependencies can work. But as you've probably guessed from my choice of words ("crippling"), presenting an altered interface to all current and future reverse dependencies doesn't sound like a proper solution to me.
Certainly keeping the original interfaces would be the cleanest solution. So I think I take your advice and try to contact some external expert on this legal issue (there's also a list for legal issues in Debian) and report any results back to this list.
Cheers, Martin