Rules for packaging forked software
Hi,
tl;dr => What is the Debian Policy about packaging forked software?
I couldn't find this problem discussed in Debian Policy nor with
Google-helped search in mailing lists. If I missed something obvious
or I'm posting to a wrong list, please let me know as bluntly as you wish.
Recently, libx86emu [1] entered Debian as a prerequisite for the
newest version of hwinfo. Libx86emu and friends exists in at least 3
different forms in Debian (see [2] for explanation) which are forked
from a one single project. Now, I recently heard about viewnior
which was ITP and RFP some time ago [3] and did not enter Debian
because it contains a fork of libgtkview [4]. I encountered these
two cases *myself*, what makes me think that it may be even a quite
popular problem.
Are there any (semi)official rules concerning this issue?
Cheers,
Tomasz
[1] http://packages.qa.debian.org/libx/libx86emu.html
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=733578#53
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=582090
[4] http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gtkimageview.html
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