[Debian-med-packaging] Please allow relicensing for older versions of two single files from PHYLIP

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Joe,

On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 03:50:24AM -0800, Joe Felsenstein wrote:
> Thanks for the comments.  Your comments on
> the Gnu guidelines has saved me from wasting
> time looking for the Unicorn.

:-)
 
> > As far as I know all these hosting platforms are doing some kind of user
> > management were the project leader can add / refuse new programmers.
> > Considering the lot of projects which are trying to approach the very
> > same as you describe above I think it is not a technical but rather a
> > social problem which you are describing.  Since I learned that you can
> > not fix a social problem by technical means I think that the answer
> > above is rather:  Any of the platforms above are similarly good - it
> > just depends how well you manage your project.
> 
> What I want to achieve is some control over look-and-feel,
> and some veto over new "helpful" features that may not
> be helpful (and may even not do correct analyses).

Regarding correctness I'd (strongly) recommend adding a test suite which
needs to create a verified output when having a certain input.  In
Debian we are keen on running it in our packages to verify the
correctness of the build.

> Perhaps if
> there is some way that I could have this control over releases
> that are called PHYLIP while everyone else can fork all they
> want but has to call it something else.  I am not sure that my
> judgement is good enough to exercise it only by choice of who
> gets added as a programmer.

As far as I know the Mozilla Public License should have such a feature.
 
> I regret that a change of license by July is very unlikely, as
> that would have to coincide with release of a new (alpha
> release) version 4.0 and there is still a lot of work to do on
> that to even get to alpha release, and these days I have no
> programmers working for me.

Well, as I said I'm not in the position to put pressure on you but may
be it would be possible to issue a relicensed version 3.6 which would
help us a lot.

> I may however be able to
> get the license change done on the two programs required
> by Seaview.

Depending from the answer of Manolo (seaview author) he might like to
use also the 3.6 version of the files.

> By the way, the new 4.0 will have Java front ends for all the
> programs (like Drawgram and Drawtree do in 3.695).  A
> programmer working for me last year found a way to do
> that which did not prevent the programs being used standalone
> as well.

Good to know that the standalone programs wil remain working. :-)
I hope these Java front ends are not using a lot of third party JARs
which usually create some trouble for us packagers - but finally we
try to manage this for the comfort of our users.

> I am not sure whether having Java code in the
> release affects the Gnu/OS issue.

The language in itself is not the problem.  You can apply a free
license to any language program.

> I know that Oracle makes
> Java a bit less than open.

Just make sure the code will run in OpenJDK 7.

> I am wary about getting too
> committed to Java when there may be unpleasant surprises
> in the future, but at this point it was the only easy path to
> a cross-platform GUI.
> 
> In general the future looks somewhat scary, with platforms
> like Apple's iOS which do not allow programmers to do things
> in a generic way, but insist you use their environment.
> Programming itself may become impossible, leaving us just
> making Apps by drag-and-drop.

We (as in Debian developers) will take our best to create attractive
alternatives by the help of people using free licenses.  If it comes to
biologists I doubt that you can easily install this amount of software
listed here

   http://blends.debian.org/med/tasks/bio

with a single click (saying, yes, install the package med-bio).

Kind regards

      Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de