Re: Free component in a non-free tarball

[Andrius Merkys <merkys@debian.org>]

Hello,

Thanks everyone for your answers!

On 2022-08-30 21:39, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 12:00:39PM -0500, Ryan Pavlik wrote:
>> The easiest way to do the tarball cleaning is with Files-Excluded in the
>> copyright file, uscan will involve something (mkorigtargz?) that uses it to
>> repack. That's a technical answer to the technical side of the question.
> 
> Even better, probably:
> 
>     Files-Excluded: *
>     Files-Included: AmberTools

I was not aware of Files-Included. This would greatly simplify repacking
the tarball, provided policy/legal side permits.

>> On the "policy"/legal question of whether it's permissible to package the
>> internal open source in this larger source for the Debian project, I have
>> no specific opinion but it sounds complicated. You might gauge upstream's
>> feelings by asking if they can provide a tarball with just the open source
>> parts. If not, even if your interpretation of the license situation is that
>> you can package the inner code, it may not be worth it if it's fought by
>> upstream.
> 
> Exactly.
> It wouldn't be the first time that we package something that the
> original developers never intended to, only to find ourself in some sort
> of passive-agressive situation, with some sort of hostile upstream.  At
> which point, I would wholeheartedly recommend you don't even start...
> 
> Instead, if they are happy with you packaging this, they might just be
> happy enough to extract AmberTools and distribute it in some nicer way
> not requiring identification on a website…

Asking upstream seems a good way to start. This is what I will do.

Thanks again,
Andrius