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Re: On the license audit for Debian's TeX-related packages



Hi and thanks for the kind response, Norbert.

On Oct 26 2006, Norbert Preining wrote:
> 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).

Indeed, one of the primary goals of Free Software.

> > 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 ...

Well, nice that the RC stuff is done now, but I remember that the amount
of work exceeded the manpower of the people dedicated to TeX
maintainers, right?

> > 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.

Hummm, I think that even the algorithms package would have to have an
update on the TeX Catalogue, as I have not claimed Copyright on the
files that are there. :-)

>   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.

Right. I saw many packages which were not that kosher regarding
information (since some of them are old enough and they fulfill their
author's desire, without further updates, when the way people licensed
their software was more laxed).

> 	required or acquired knowledge:
> 		- license checking, some basic knowledge about licenses

Nice, they are catching up with the various licences right now, seeing
things like the different freedoms, incompatibilities etc.

> 		- basic svn stuff, updating the TeX Catalogue uses
> 		  svn or sending the stuff to us.

Ok, this is not a problem here, as I can teach them the basic use of
svn. If their changes are worthy of trust, I hope that they actually get
committ access.

Knowing them, I think that this is something that both Victor and João
Paulo will prove to be trustworthy soon to the community.

> - 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

Right. I can provide them both prerequisites.

> Of course, doing both would be fantastic ...

Let's see how the work goes on. I hope that they become frequent
contributors, especially after they graduate...

> 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.

Thanks, this is mostly welcome, indeed.

> <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.

And other distributions. Victor was worried that his work would not work
in an "agnostic" way regarding platforms.

Victor, many TeX distributions are made from a central repository of
packages listed in the TeX Catalogue, including those that run on
Windows (MikTeX is the first one that comes to mind). So, no, your work
won't be specific to a given platform.

> 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>

Nice, I think that this can be dealt with after the get some exposure to 

> 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.

We will discuss these things and I am sure that we will surely find a
lot of things in common.


Thank you very much, Rogério Brito.

-- 
Rogério Brito : rbrito@ime.usp.br : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de
Homepage on freshmeat:  http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/



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