Serious problem with geoip - databases could not be build from source

[Patrick Matthäi <pmatthaei@debian.org>]

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Hello lists and maxmind,

(please CC me in your replys, I am not subscribed to debian-legal@ and
debian-devel@, thanks).

First some facts:
- - geoip is installed/used by many users, popcon reports something like 20%
- - Some more packages are in the reverse dependency list
- - Much much much more packages are in the reverse reverse dependency
list of it


GeoIP is a quite usefull library for geolocation.
It has got a stable ABI/API and upstream is normaly very helpfull with
patches and issues.

But I have got a serious problem with it:
1) upstream delivers the databases only as binary .dat files
2) csv versions of the free databases are available
3) upstream isn't cooperative to tell us how to build the binary files
from the csv (source) files

I tried to fix this issue together with upstream, but his decision was,
that we should remove the database(s) from the tarball and let them
download at install time, this would be a candidate for contrib.

If Boris Zentner ACKs with it I will publish the mailing result of us.

I disagree with it, because of the reverse dependencies.
GeoIP is also not a candidate for main without any database, because the
whole library isn't usefull in any manner then.


Currently I see only three options:
1) upstream decides to open his build system
2) we move it to contrib with all consequences
3) we leave it as it is

2) would be a disaster in my and many other eyes, 3) would be an
exception of the DFSG, 1) is in my opinion the only acceptable solution
for this problem.

I hope you could help me. :)

- --
/*
Mit freundlichem Gruß / With kind regards,
 Patrick Matthäi
 GNU/Linux Debian Developer

E-Mail: pmatthaei@debian.org
        patrick@linux-dev.org

Comment:
Always if we think we are right,
we were maybe wrong.
*/
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