Bug#609845: ftp.debian.org: RM: imapsync -- RoM; author doesn't want us to distribute his program

[Alexander Reichle-Schmehl]

Hi Jeff!

Am 26.01.2011 14:22, schrieb Jeff Epler:
> I do not understand why you wish to remove from the debian archive
> software that debian users may rely on (as far as I can see from the
> original report, not everyone's use of the version Debian ships hits the
> reported problem), just because of a possible license problem in a
> *different version* of the software than debian ships.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no license probleme per se.  There
are similar examples of "pay for download, but then it's free" software
(sorry, forgot the name; but it's somewhere in the archive... I think
it's a package starting with the letter "b", but I can't remember details.)

> As far as I can see, the author of this software has even said in a
> message in this bug report that "You can even make [this software] a GPL
> software"[1], which I understand him to mean that the intent of the new
> license is to be GPL-compatible!

Please scroll down in the very bug report:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=609845#60

The author of the software cleary stated, that he wished to no longer
have his software distributed in Debian.  Please also note, that the
former maintainer of the imapsync package did no longer want to continue
maintaining that package.

So for Debian, the decission was to a) remove it or b) properly orphan
it, and wait for someone to pick up maintainership or (more likely)
leave it the state it is, bitrotting in our archive.  Option b) would
have also lead to problems supporting that package in Debian.

Given the circumstances, I considered it quite unlikely, that someone
would pick up maintainance of it, so I picked option a) (with the soon
to be release of squeeze also in mind).

I'm sorry, that the removal of the package causes problems for users,
but I still think removal of the package is the best solution, but
hopefully most of these users can migrate to similar tools in Debian.

Best regards,
  Alexander