Bug#27906: PROPOSED] Binary-only NMU's

[Daniel Martin <dtm12@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>]

Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

> Roman Hodek writes ("Re: Bug#27906: [PROPOSED] Binary-only NMU's"):
> ...
> > It's the consent of many porters (including James Troup, ..., me, ...)
> > that we don't break the GPL by bin-only NMUs, as the complete source
> > is still available in an "official" way: first the usual source
> > package, plus additionally a patch available from the BTS.
> 
> With all due respect (and I have a lot of respect for the porters and
> the work they do), the porters' consent is irrelevant.  The porters do
> not determine what the licence on the software is; the original
> authors do that, and if they use the GPL, then the GPL says what is
> and isn't allowed.
> 
> GPL v2, s3, last para, emph mine:
>    If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
>    access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent
>    access to copy the source code _from the same place_ counts as
>    distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not
>    compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
> 
> The BTS is not the same place as the FTP site.  For example, many
> people make CDs and mirrors of the FTP site but not of the BTS.

I almost hate to suggest this, as it has the potential for much
evilness, but would it be possible to somehow mark diffs as specific
to some arch only?  

The idea is that the original maintainer would upload a package for
their own arch; a porter would tweak it to also combine on
architecture foo and then a package....diff.gz.foo would get uploaded
with the binary for architecture foo.  The existence of
package...diff.gz.foo would be automatically reported (perhaps by the
installer?) as a bug against the package, and any conscientious (it's
late; I can't spell) maintainer would integrate the arch-specific
tweakings into the next release.  Any maintainer that didn't do this
deserves to have a binary+source NMU made to stamp out their source
with cross-platform source.

Unfortunately, this would require a reworking of several things,
including ideally a specialized "porters' dpkg-buildpackage".