Bug#879123: glee: source for configure is missing

[Markus Koschany]

Am 19.10.2017 um 22:34 schrieb Adrian Bunk:
> On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 08:23:24PM +0200, Markus Koschany wrote:
>> ...
>> In my opinion the configure script of glee is DFSG-compliant and
>> suitable for main. The license states:
>>
>> # Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>> # This configure script is free software; the Free Software Foundation
>> # gives unlimited permission to copy, distribute and modify it.
> 
> According to debian/copyright the FSF is not a copyright holder of glee, 
> and the licence is likely not what you quote.
> 
> Whoever wrote the configure.{ac,in} would actually be relevant here.

I am quoting:

https://sources.debian.net/src/glee/5.4.0-2/configure/

The license is very liberal. You can argue that it should be mentioned
in debian/copyright but that does not make the file non-free or
unsuitable for Debian main.

> 
>> It is correct that configure scripts are usually auto-generated but we
>> have never treated the absence of those files as RC issues. In
>> consequence this means that all automake packages which cannot use
>> dh-autoreconf are unsuitable for main.
> 
> You are mixing two related but separate issues.
> 
> Problems when using dh-autoreconf are a grey area, but these are being 
> sorted out with autoreconf usually being used now (in earlier times 
> autoreconf was nearly never done in Debian).
> 
> No configure.{ac,in} at all is a pretty clear situation,
> and also very rare.

Nope, you are mixing two unrelated issues. dh-autoreconf is the default
with compat level 10 now. That does not mean at all, it would render
packages without dh-autoreconf or with earlier compat levels non
DFSG-compliant.

> 
>> Thus I believe the resolution of
>> this bug report would be of general importance to the Debian project and
>> should be discussed on debian-devel at least.
> 
> The topic has already been discussed there countless times,
> most recently for things like minified JavaScript.

This is not true. The configure file is human readable and the preferred
source of modification in this case. Please also note that the author of
glee licensed his work under the more liberal BSD-2-clause license. You
cannot compare two very distinct issues like minified JS files and
automake files and claim consensus has been reached already.

> 
>> However I am in favor of closing this bug report as "not-a-bug".
> 
> In NEW this bug alone would be sufficient for a direct reject[1]:
> 
> Source missing
> Your package contains files that need source but do not have it. These 
> include PDF and PS files in the documentation, or auto-generated files.
> 
> Source package missing source
> Source packages are part of the distribution. As such source must be 
> present for all files in the source package itself, ...

Again quoted out of context and not relevant in this case. The source is
the configure script. Period. Please feel free to discuss this on
debian-devel or move it to the CTTE. I am willing to oppose this
nonsense and harmful misinterpretation of Debian's Policy whenever and
wherever I can.

Regards,

Markus


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