Re: On the license audit for Debian's TeX-related packages
Hi all of you!
On Mit, 25 Okt 2006, Rogério Brito wrote:
> As I mentioned before, I have some students of mine that are interested
> in getting involved with Free Software projects.
Great, welcome all of you. We hope that you find as much fun and
satisfaction as we do (otherwise we wouldn't do it).
First of, if you have a time when you don't want/don't care, its ok,
nobody expects you (besides Rogério as your supervisor ;-) that you work
full time on Open Source. Anything you contribute is great, and we will
try to help you as much as possible.
> In particular, João Paulo and Victor are interested in studying licences
> of Free Software and since I know that you have a relese-critical
Well, most of the RC stuff is fixed for now, but still, this is of
course always like a Damocles sword above us ...
> So, would you have any pending task for them? I think that the tasks of
> dealing with repositories, version control systems, packaging for Debian
> etc I can teach them, but I don't know exactly what is the work that
> needs to be done, specifically (e.g., which packages are problematic).
There are two areas:
- actual checking the licenses:
This is about updating the TeX Catalogue with correct/verified license
information. Normally it looks like this: Choose a package, get the
stuff from the nearest CTAN archive, check all the files for license
statements, MANIFEST files, etc etc etc. If you are sure what is the
license, update the TeX Catalogue entry for this package.
Since teTeX and TeX Live for Debian uses the information from the
TeX Catalogue for License information this will end up finally in the
respective Debian packages.
required or acquired knowledge:
- license checking, some basic knowledge about licenses
- basic svn stuff, updating the TeX Catalogue uses
svn or sending the stuff to us.
- improve the scripts in teTeX and TeX Live in Debian which generate a
license document from the installed files and the information in the
TeX Catalogue. This need some work, but currently neither Frank nor
me has time to invest much time into tpm2licenses script, which is
currently doing the work
required or acquired knowledge
- perl scripting
- debian packaging
Of course, doing both would be fantastic ...
So if you want to know more details, for TeX Live in Debian I can tell
you more, and Frank for sure for teTeX. On the general tpm2licenses
script (which was originally written by me with loads of additions from
Frank) and the tpm packaging mechanism both of us can help you.
<put on TeX Live upstream hat>
In TeX live we need a lot of updates, which includes:
- license checking
- writing some Perl code
- reading code, and License documents, etc etc etc
All of this work will of course end up finally also in the Debian
packages.
For this Karl Berry and me we have already written a document explaining
how to do all this:
http://www.tug.org/texlive/pkgupdate.html
which covers:
- updates from CTAN to TeX Live depot
- including new packages to the automated process
- checking licenses of these packages and updating the Catalogue
So this might be interesting for you, too, especially if you also want
to put your hand onto some perl programming.
<put off TeX Live upstream hat>
Ok, loads of things I have written. If you find something interesting
for you, just tell us, we will be happy to see any support in any area.
If you haven't seen anything of interest, maybe something else might be
of interest (Debian packaging stuff, automatic test systems, ...), just
let us know.
Best wishes
Norbert
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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> Università di Siena
Debian Developer <preining@debian.org> Debian TeX Group
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