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Re: PINE Debian Package



On Mon, Apr 20, 1998 at 05:46:10PM -0700, George Bonser wrote:
> I quote from the copyright:
> 
> ...
> 
> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
> documentation for any purpose and without fee to the University of
> Washington is hereby granted, provided that these legal notices appear in
> all copies and supporting documentation, that the name "Pine" is retained,
> and that the name of the University of Washington is not used in
> advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software
> without specific, written prior permission.  This software is made
> available "as is".
> 
> Although the above trademark and copyright restrictions do not convey the
> right to redistribute derivative works, the University of Washington
> encourages unrestricted distribution of patch files which can be applied
> to the University of Washington Pine distribution.
> 
> ...
> 
> Someone in Debian saw that second paragraph and thought "gee, we make a
> patch file to create our package so we must have a derivative work". 
> We have to distribute the debianization as a separate file in source form
> only.  
> 
> I think that is incorrect and I further suspect that nobody contacted
> washington.edu to make sure.  I will bet that what debian does is ok
> since we are doing only what the end user has to do anyhow.  It is simply
> a matter of someone taking an interpretation to an extreme.  Nowhere does
> it say in that copyright that you can not distribute a binary.  That is
> all that debian is doing.

I do believe the above paragraph does indicate that only pristine binary
and source packages may be distributed.  The source packaging seems okay
though.

What I would suggest be done is to create a package which includes the
source, dsc file, etc in /usr/src/pine-src as was done for qmail.  Add a
quick README.Debian to the thing telling person who has just installed
this source package how to build it.  You could even give them this
script:

#!/bin/sh
dpkg-source -x pine_3.96L-7.dsc
cd pine-3.96L
dpkg-buildpackage -B -uc
cd ..

There, that's it.  4 lines and 3 .deb files later.  Then just install the
ones you want and call it good.  I don't see the problem here.

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