[Debian-med-packaging] Your try to get a free libcolt-java (Was: r16752 - in trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian: . patches)

[Tim Booth]

Hi Andreas,

If you actually look at the files under hep/aida/bin they appear to be
part of Colt and written solely by the Colt authors, despite what the
namespace would suggest.  The files under hep/aida/ref look to be
related to an early version of JAIDA, but given the authorship they
could well be customised to Colt.

So I don't think there is any hope of replacing these files with
anything else because they are actually Colt code, not AIDA code.  The
only files from AIDA itself are the I*.java files which I patched out.

Now strictly speaking "hep.aida.*" in Java-speak only matches classes
directly under the hep.aida. namespace, while hep.aida.** would match
the entire subtree.  My guess is that this is actually the correct
interpretation, but only Wolfgang can clarify that as he's the author of
all that code.

Cheers,

TIM

On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 22:06 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> many thanks for trying your luck to free libcolt-java.  It is really
> appreciated and I would really love if others would try to join your
> attempt.
> 
> However, when reading your comment of the patch:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 02:49:21PM +0000, Timothy Booth wrote:
> > Added: trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian/patches/build_without_aida_interface_defs.patch
> > ===================================================================
> > --- trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian/patches/build_without_aida_interface_defs.patch	                        (rev 0)
> > +++ trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian/patches/build_without_aida_interface_defs.patch	2014-04-22 14:49:20 UTC (rev 16752)
> > @@ -0,0 +1,948 @@
> > +This patch forcefully rips out references to all the I*.java interface files
> > +that are not DFSG-free, having a "no military use" restriction.
> > +
> > +See: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2014-April/025987.html
> > +
> > +However, it is ambiguous whether the files uder hep/aida/ref and hep/aida/bin are also
> > +under the non-free license.  Only Wolfgang Hoschek can answer this question and he has been
> > +sadly silent so far.  So I don't know if this patch actually solves anything or not.
> > +
> > +The code is (or should be) functionally equivalent since the interface defs contain no actual code,
> > +only function and class prototypes, and the process of removing them was mostly a matter of
> > +find-and-replace of the interface names with the implementing class names.  However the code
> > +is certainly less neat after this patch - especially as I forced VariableAxis to inherit from
> > +FixedAxis - and also any code which links against Colt and references the I* classes will fail
> > +to build and will require patching too.
> > +
> > +-- Tim Booth <tbooth at ceh.ac.uk>, April 2014
> 
> I think we are not done yet.  Quoting xdocs/license.xml says:
> 
> Packages hep.aida.*
>   ...  with the exception that any usage related to military applications
>        is expressly forbidden
> 
> So I think even a patch to the existing code is not sufficient since the
> patch does not kick the code out of the source package.  We rather need
> something like
> 
>    Files-Excluded: src/hep/aida
> 
> in d/copyright to fullfill the requirement to get the package accepted
> in Debian main.  I wonder whether the package
> 
>    libjas-plotter-java
> 
> might provide some replacement code or whether we could make use of
> 
>    http://aida.freehep.org/download.thtml
> 
> (after packaging it following the scheme of other freehep packages.)
> 
> Or we try again to nag the only person who is involved in this code who
> was actually at least answering and did not covered in total silence.
> May be we really try the approach I suggested here:
> 
>    https://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2014-February/025141.html
> 
> Kind regards
> 
>      Andreas.
> 

-- 
Tim Booth <tbooth at ceh.ac.uk>
NERC Environmental Bioinformatics Centre 

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