New xvidcore package at mentors.debian.net

Loïc Martin loic.martin3 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 25 14:30:56 UTC 2009


Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> Hi Loic and Reinhard,
> 
> Reinhard Tartler schrieb:
>> Fabian has some comments on the package, espc. on debian/copyright I
>> think moving the package to cdbs. perhaps you two can  discuss that on
>> the mailing list?
> 
> Yes, let's just start here. The two files that caused headache for me 
> were debian/rules and debian/copyright.
> 
> debian/rules:
> I have converted the file to use CDBS and now it has 6 lines of code 
> while retaining all the basic funtionality.

As long as I won't have to touch the packaging again, it's fine :D
I don't use CDBS, am not confident enough to use it, and won't learn it 
in the near future.

> debian/copyright:
> I like the idea of a machine parsable copyright file but I don't think 
> that a 20kB file repeating the very same information over and over again 
> brings us anywhere. The most important part is the everything is 
> licensed under the GPL-2+ and that all copyright holders find their name 
> in the file. Everything else is just added confusion IMHO. I have 
> changed the file to list all upstream copyright holders for "Files: *" 
> and "License: GPL-2+". I am sorry this would shoot down all the 
> investigation that you have done on the code, but I really think that we 
> should find a reasonable common denominator in this regard.

That was actually what I was planning to do once xvidcore entered 
pkg-multimedia and I could access git ;)

I deliberately left it "as is" to show the review was thorough and 
prevent any generalisations that xvidcore package has license issues? 
Another reason was that some files were missing copyright/license 
headers, and upstream only added them recently. I was going to move it 
to a saner format once the package entered pkg-multimedia, there's no 
difference whether you or I do it.

> For the two "special files" src/dct/{fdct.c,idct.c} I found another 
> issue. You include some text from the README file in the license notice. 
> IMHO this is irrelevant. Instead there is another copyright notice (MPEG 
> group) and license fragment in the file that you might have overlooked. 
> I added this to the license text for these two files.

Right. About the same files though, what of this part from the readme:
> (1) If any part of the source code for this software is distributed, then this
> README file must be included, with this copyright and no-warranty notice
> unaltered; and any additions, deletions, or changes to the original files
> must be clearly indicated in accompanying documentation.
> (2) If only executable code is distributed, then the accompanying
> documentation must state that "this software is based in part on the work of
> the Independent JPEG Group".

While the README itself can be omitted in binary-only distributions, 
shouldn't there at least be a mention of (2) in debian/copyright? I can 
understand that since the README is in the src/ when Debian ships the 
source package, it might be considered sufficient, but for binary 
distribution (even if pkg-multimedia doesn't ship any binaries) a 
mention in debian/copyright might be nice.

Regards,
Loïc



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