Re: Flogging a dead horse....
Roger Leigh wrote:
Although after studying Policy, I really should separate the drum
patches from the main package and put them in xdrum-data perhaps,
since it does build on other architectures now.
What do you mean? Would drum-data just be arch-independent data? How
does this relate to any patches?
Yep this is misleading. These are Midi patches which are like sound bytes
that harken back to Gravis Ultrasound and are now used by Timidity. Xdrum
has a bunch of these for your snare, hihat, cowbell, clap, etc. Try it out
and you'll see. The package is totally installable (for Woody at least).
There's about a Meg compressed of drum Midi patches.
It's on my Netwinder server http://www.gyrodynamic.net/debian/xdrum/
You _need_ the trailing slash, and it may not work through a firewall
since it runs on port 13808 and is redirected using dynamic dns.
In this case, the legal status of xdrum is unclear. Parts of it are
copyrighted by Olof Astrand, and parts by you. Whatever the original
license, you cannot /re-license/ (e.g. GPL) any code copyrighted by
him without his permission (since he retains the right to relicense
it).
"Public domain" means the "absence of copyright protection" [foldoc].
The fact that he has copyrighted some parts does confuse the issue. I
would err on the side of caution. In the UK, "public domain" does not
have any legal status, so the copyright is presumably still standing.
I'd like to contact him but the dude seems to have vanished from
the face of the internet. Hope he's making the big bucks :-)
If you know what country he lived in (Scandinavia?), I would try
making enquiries to find his phone number, address or relatives who
can help you (or try google?). I think this is important and
necessary before xdrum can enter Debian.
In reality, there shouldn't be a problem, but you do need to ensure
that all the code is 100% legal WRT copyright and licensing. If in
doubt, I'd leave everything in the public domain, or re-write the
copyrighted portions from scratch.
I agree. He is from Sweden, and although I am versed in Deutsche, I
have little knowledge of Swedish (but I do own an antique SAAB :)
Maybe he will pop up here somewhere. I hope so. He seems to have
pseudo-randomly scattered copyright notices here and there in the
source code and then washed his hands of it in the README.
Because I did follow his README's condition of sending him an email,
which he did reply, I presume I can do what I want with the code just
like the README says, but I want to err on the side of caution here
and not tick anybody off.
Well, later days, gotta go, etc etc...
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