Bug#693885: GFDL licence problem

[Ivo De Decker]

Control: tag -1 patch

Hi Dimitrios,

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:21:14PM +0200, Dimitrios Eftaxiopoulos wrote:
> Alexey Balakin, the upstream author of mathgl, has prepared a new incremental 
> upstream version 1.11.3, after my relevant request (actually I requested that 
> before asking Sebastien which might have not been technically appropriate). My 
> request was based on the need for a change in some documentation license 
> statements. Alexey conformed with this request in the new version. 
> 
> He also added minor changes and bug fixes. A few months ago Alexey had asked me 
> whether it would be useful for Debian to have a new upstream version in the 
> line of the 1.11 series, with minor changes that he had in mind to implement. 
> Not having serious bugs for mathgl in testing at the time, i discouraged him 
> from doing so. I encouraged him to concentrate on version 2.* which had also 
> been shaped up and been worked on at the time.
> 
> I will quickly check the usability of version 1.11.3. I cannot check every 
> aspect of it. If I find no serious drawbacks, I would like to have it in 
> testing, such that the efforts of the upstream author for Debian are rewarded.
> 
> Is it technically impossible at this time of the release cycle to have version 
> 1.11.3 in testing? If the answer to the question is yes, then I will just 
> change the debian/copyright file with a reference to a svn commit in the mathgl 
> upstream repository. 

You should check the freeze policy at
http://release.debian.org/wheezy/freeze_policy.html

Looking at the diff between 1.11.2 and 1.11.3, it seems unlikely that the
release team would approve the new version. But I'm not speaking on their
behalf, so you can always check with them.

The patch you committed contains a lot of changes caused by a new autoconf
version, which shouldn't be included in the RC bugfix.
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=debian-science/packages/mathgl.git;a=commitdiff;h=97a60aa78b3f9c1250785143eeba47546e582e34

For reference, I include a stripped version of your patch. Thanks for your
work on debian.

diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 583d4ca..7ea0639 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+mathgl (1.11.2-15) unstable; urgency=low
+
+  * Change debian/copyright file such that the license of the documentation 
+    files included in the upstream source */texinfo diractory, becomes free
+    (Closes: #693885).
+
+ -- Dimitrios Eftaxiopoulos <eftaxi12 at otenet.gr>  Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:59:35 +0200
+
 mathgl (1.11.2-14) unstable; urgency=low
 
   * Make several libmgl-wx5 related symbols optional in order to fix FTBFS on
diff --git a/debian/copyright b/debian/copyright
index 48725de..5d1bdcf 100644
--- a/debian/copyright
+++ b/debian/copyright
@@ -18,19 +18,19 @@ License: GPL-2+
  for more details.
 
 Files: texinfo/*
-Copyright: (C) 2008 Alexey Balakin <mathgl.abalakin at gmail.com>
+Copyright: (C) 2008-2012 Alexey Balakin <mathgl.abalakin at gmail.com>
 License: GFDL-1.2+
  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
- under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
- any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
- Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being ``A GNU Manual,''
- and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below.  A copy of the
- license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation
- License.''
- (a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: ``You have the freedom to
- copy and modify this GNU manual.  Buying copies from the FSF
- supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom.''
-
+ under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
+ or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
+ with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
+ Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU
+ Free Documentation License''.
+Comment: The above text is included in the file 
+ http://svn.code.sf.net/p/mathgl/code/mathgl-code/mathgl-1x/texinfo/
+ copyright.texi
+ in the upstream SCM repository.
+ 
 Files: debian/*
 Copyright: 
  (C) 2008 Bradley Smith <brad at brad-smith.co.uk>


Cheers,

Ivo