Re: *-dfsg packages
* Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at> schrieb:
> One question springs to my mind: On a regular basis the non-free parts
> aren't distributable, at all. How would you address that in a complete
> VCS history? Just because the recent checkout doesn't have the files
> doesn't mean they are stored in either the upstream branch directly or
> at least in historical commits that aren't too hard to check out.
AFAIK in most cases (at least those I have in mind right now) the
complete package may be redistributed as-is. The VCS will provide
that. (it's still the same content, but just a different storage).
Really proprietary upstreams which require using the exact upstream
tarballs, possibly even from their website (or authorized mirrors)
won't fit in here, of course.
Most important to me are cases like mysql, where the parts of the
upstream package are non-GPL. Here the -dfsg is needed due Debian's
licensing policies. (other distros have no such policies and just
take the upstream source as it is). Debian simply strips off the
non-GPL parts (documentation, etc) and calls that *-dfsg. Those
things could easily be done w/ an VCS. And that would be a big
help for folks who have their own downstream branch (eg. for
additional features) and want to package it into Debian.
cu
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