[Debichem-devel] Automatic debianization of software that can't be distributed

[Johannes Schauer]

Hi,

Quoting Johannes Schauer (2013-09-05 15:49:35)
> I will mention the free-ness issue too but as I do not have high hopes, I
> tried to write a script which automates the login and download process:
>
> [snip python script]
> 
> Maybe such a script allows to make a package which at least automates the
> downloading an package building part. This would circumvent the
> un-redistributibility (does that word exist? :D) of vmd.  Probably similar to
> the adobe flash situation.

I asked on the vmd mailing list and apparently using such a downloading script
would be fine (Message-ID: <20131007140825.GD32255 at casablanca.ks.uiuc.edu>).

Now the question is, whether it would be worth it to create a package which
just contains the download script and the vmd ./debian directory. Installing
that package would provide the user with a script that he can call which would
download the vmd source (after asking for username and password) and then
populate the source tree with the ./debian directory. The user can then
dpkg-buildpackage that and do with the resulting binary whatever he wants.

Given that lots of scientific software is not freely redistributable because
funding requires keeping track of the number of users, does there exist another
package that does things like this?

Is there anything in Debian policy which prevents packages like that?

cheers, josch