Bug#392333: [Fwd: Re: Bug#392333: AW: [Fwd: ITP: irrtoolset -- policy analysis tools to operate with routing policies in RPSL format]]
Jan, hi,
[ Cc'ing the ITP ]
Jan Wagner wrote:
> I agree with you, that maintaining the package isn't a big trick. From the
> last releases, the biggest issue was the review of the copyright/license
> changes and probably maintaining additional patches.
I'm not sure if you follow upstream's list so I'll repeat some stuff anyway.
Some months ago I contacted some of the original authors about the
licensing mess. The main author, Cengiz Alaettinoglu, who did the work
for ISI/USC back then but has since left, promptly replied and was able
to reach some of his old colleagues who convinced USC's management to a
relicensing.
All in all, we had a happy ending and all of the weird non-free
licensing, including the stuff that had IBM copyrights(!) have been
cleared and the license has been replaced by a standard MIT one!
Nick and Shane were aware of this and were holding off the 5.0.0 release
(the cruft-cleanout one) so that it can be released with the new
license. 4.8.6 (= MIT-licensed 4.8.5) was released today, so 5.0.0 will
soon follow.
However, there are also some bad news: the project has been pronounced
dead at the last RIPE summit by Nick. He has worked on it for over a
year and decided that the software is broken beyond repair -- he's the
one that cleaned up all the cruft. I objected and several others were
not very happy about it; if you're not subscribed, have a look at the
archives for the discussion that followed.
I'm not sure how to proceed. I think the best course would be to wait a
bit and see before uploading to Debian.
Regards,
Faidon
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