Bug#457075: Status of Salomé packaging

["Ondrej Certik" <ondrej@certik.cz>]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@debian.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 13:19 +0200, Jordi Mallach wrote:
>> Hi Adam & rest of list,
>>
>> I've been checking the archives for progress on Salomé's ITP, which
>> seemed quite promising back in March. However, after the success with
>> the OpenCASCADE effort, I see no more references to Salomé.
>>
>> Is the ITP stalled for some licensing reason, or do the compile problems
>> still apply and have not been resolved yet?
>
> I have resolved the compile problems, but at runtime, none of the
> modules load.  (As noted in this bug, you can get the latest at
> http://lyre.mit.edu/~powell/salome/ .)  I've solved this problem before,
> and could solve it again.
>
> But upstream practices are really frustrating me.  They released a new
> binary 3.2.9 Salomé-MECA back in -- forgot, March? -- but with no source
> code.  So any new effort I make is already obsolete.  Furthermore, they
> have never released the source of the MECA extensions, even though this
> is supposed to be an open source project.
>
> To add insult to injury, they have *never* replied to ANY of my emails
> or website inquiries.  (I even took the time to write to specific
> developers in French, but with no reply.)  I have put a *TON* of effort
> into this, on the order of 100 hours, as you can see from the nearly 50
> patches, and really feel blown off and disrespected by upstream.
>
> At some point I'll give up on upstream and go ahead and fix the 3.2.6
> package, essentially maintaining a Debian fork until upstream releases
> more source.  But this is a very low priority for the above reasons.
>
> While ranting about upstream, I should thank Sylvestre Ledru for
> participating in the discussion with upstream, including using some of
> his contacts to try to move this along.  I hear there will be a meeting
> in September to try to resolve some of these issues, and will return to
> packaging work if something comes out of this process.

This is really frustrating. Sorry to hear that! That's why I prefer
small tools, or tools that are simple in nature, so that in the worse
case one can maintain it alone if upstream decides to close the
source.

Ondrej