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Bug#807637: inform6lib/6.12: Non-source file ‘infglk.h’ with no corresponding source



On 16-Apr-2016, Stephen Kitt wrote:
> I'm not convinced this is non-free. The only troublesome clause I
> see is the requirement to mention Zarf's name and the URL; but that
> isn't less free than say the zlib license AFAICS... Am I missing
> something?

I mis-parsed the text of those license conditions; it appeared to
explicitly deny redistribution of modified versions.

Reading it again today, I see that it subsequently grants all the
necessary permissions, conditional only on retaining an attribution
notice.

This works fine for software freedom; it seems ‘cheapglk’ is free
software under a non-standard license.

The ‘glk-dev’ code base is partly non-free (CC By-NC-SA-3.0), but
software freedom is explicitly granted in ‘dispatch_dump’, the
component needed for building ‘infglk.h’.

So there appears to be a path – work carefully to get those parts
packaged for Debian as build dependencies for ‘infglk.h’.


None the less, I would like the current “6.12+dfsg.1-1” release of
‘inform6-library’ in Debian, because it works fine without ‘infglk.h’
(that is provided only as a convenience) and is now free software.

The file is not needed for any of the advertised features of the
package; the library already contained support for producing Glk
output since before version 6.12. I have compiled some example Inform
6 source to Glulx story files without that file.

Between omitting the file because it lacks corresponding source, and
delaying to get the build dependencies for this convenience file, I
would rather do the former for now.

-- 
 \           “Special today: no ice cream.” —mountain inn, Switzerland |
  `\                                                                   |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney <ben@benfinney.id.au>

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