Re: Test failures when trying to package Gubbins for Debian
Hi Tal,
I'm writing you on behalf of the Debian Med team which has the objective
to package all free software that might be relevant in medicine and
biology for official Debian. You might like to have a look into the
software in the field of biology inside Debian[1].
Recently we received the request to package Gubbins from Sanger
institute[2] (Andrew Page as one of the authors in CC) and I noticed
that it depends from your software FASTML. (Actually Gubbins is using
an adapted version of FASTML which is called fastml2 and maintained at
Github[3].)
To fulfill the dependency requirement of Gubbins we also would need to
package FASTML but I noticed that the website states the following
Copyright:
To modify the code, or use parts of it for other purposes,
permission is requested. Please contact Tal Pupko
Please note that the use of the FASTML programs is for academic use
only
The choice of this license is a bit unfortunate since the first part
would not enable a distribution by Debian since we ship only software
that allows unrestricted modification to our users. For instance in
case of a potentially detected security problem it would not be
acceptable for the security team to ask for permission to fix the
problem quickly since this would be an inacceptable delay.
The second restriction you are applying is the academic use only.
Software with such kind of license unfortunately needs to go to the so
called non-free section in Debian which means the package does not
belong to the official Debian distribution. The reason is that it is in
conflict with item 5. and 6. of the Debian Free Software Guidelines[4].
The non-free section has several consequences for the package itself
(for instance it is excluded from typical quality assurance means like
regular fresh builds and test suite runs) and for its dependencies - in
this specific case Gubbins. Since Gubbins would depend from a package
in non-free it also can not be included in the main Debian distribution
even if it is covered by a free license. It could at best target at the
so called "contrib" section (=free license but depending from package in
non-free) with the same consequences that the usual quality means are
not applied.
I wonder whether you might be willing to reconsider the license of
FASTML for the profit of Gubbins and to my personal experience also to
the profit of FASTML itself. In the past we have discussed licensing
issues with several authors of software (latest prominent example was
Joe Felsenstein with phylip which is now delivered under BSD license).
Besides the extra eyes that might look onto your code and provide
enhancements the inclusion into Debian might bring you some extra
users - or at least some estimation how many Debian users are using
FASTML (see on [1] the numbers of the so called popularity contest.
So it would be really great if you would consider a free license. Feel
free to ask us for advise which one of the usual licenses might fit best
in your case.
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] http://blends.debian.org/med/tasks/bio
[2] https://sanger-pathogens.github.io/gubbins/
[3] https://github.com/AidanDelaney/fastml2
[4] https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
--
http://fam-tille.de
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