Bug#312552: Bug #312552 - Obsolete package
SI unrar-free unamintained upstream ? I don't think so there have been
contribution from mplayer a few monthes ago.
http://www.unrarlib.org/faq.html
"What about RAR 3 support?
RAR3 support is not scheduled. It would imply problems with the GPL license (RAR3 features a PPM based compression algorithm developed by Dmitry Shkarin plus some code by Eugeny Roshal).
If you need RAR3 support, check ftp.rarabs.com for the original unrar source code and extract the needed code yourself.
Windows developers may have a look at Sebastian Schuberth's "arch::ifstream" library (requires the unrar.dll).
If YOU added RAR3 support and would like to share it with the 2000 monthly visitors of this page, so please let me know."
with :
"Do you know that the license for the unrar sources from RARLab is not compatible with the GNU Public license?
Yes, this is true. But we have the permission from Eugene Roshal to release unrarlib 0.4.0 under GPL and unrarlib-license. Note: this doen't mean that RAR is free now or you can use the unrar source from RARlabs under GPL. You are just allowed to use UniquE RAR File Library version 0.4.0 (unrarlib 0.4.0) under GPL."
I don't get what is the meaning of :
"It would imply problems with the GPL license (RAR3 features a PPM based compression algorithm developed by Dmitry Shkarin plus some code by Eugeny Roshal)."
Does it means the only way they believe they could had support for rar3 is by taking the
rar3 code from non free upstream ?
>From the second stance i conclude that there never was a development team for the
decompression algorythm.
unrarlib looks like a library wrapper around a port of a "given" rar2 core.
Which is useless now for debian rar users.
The submitter :
"But sarge, etch and sid have rar >3.x, so...it produce newer archve."
tells it all. The compression tool is provided freely though the decompression one won't.
So it looks like the library is of some use if a program want to use rar2 as its internal storage
format but ithe unrar tool is useless to users ... unrar-free could be of some use to programs that
cannot use the c library , shell scripts ...
Should we remove it or tag it as developper only in the README (and maybe ship it in /usr/lib so that it does not conflict with the "user" unrar-nonfree ) ?
Regards
Alban
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