[Debichem-devel] dl-poly-classic_1.10+dfsg-1_amd64.changes REJECTED

[Michael Banck]

Hi,

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:59:01PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> On Sun 23 Feb 2020 at 12:39PM +11, Stuart Prescott wrote:
> 
> > If no licence text were included in a source tarball, would not an ftp-master
> > review ask for evidence that the package is freely distributable? LICENCE.pdf
> > is the only file that gives Debian permission to redistribute the source code.
> > While a PDF is not our normal way of including such information, it seems
> > quite wrong to not include it.
> 
> I do see what you're getting at, but I'm inclined still to think that it
> should be removed.
> 
> On the one hand, *maybe* the Debian maintainer's word, as recorded in
> d/copyright, is less good evidence than a PDF file included in the
> tarball.
> 
> On the other hand, it's crystal clear in DFSG that we don't want to
> include files which don't have their preferred forms for modification.

Are you saying I should be able to modify LICENSE.pdf to say it is
GPL'd? Sorry for being a bit grumpy, but honestly, I am starting to lose
interest in Debian packaging if we get caught up on the preferred form
of modification for a simple text-file PDF.

I packaged this because it is a relevant piece of software, see e.g.
page 6 of this slidedeck:
https://cug.org/proceedings/cug2014_proceedings/includes/files/pap127-file2.pdf

To be more constructive, are you ok with some elaborate scheme where we
first pipe LICENSE.pdf through pdftotxt or whatever (which appears to
have semi-sensible output), and then purge the PDF before repackaging?

Or maybe just add the .txt (as a Debian patch), as there is really no
artistic add-ons in the PDF to the text whatsoever, and I hope we are
not going to argue about the margin sizes or font types etc.


Michael