[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Please update the World English Bible module to version 1.8

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
> It is because of these copyrighted modules that I would prefer not to have
> modules packaged by Debian/Ubuntu.  My problem is that these packages do not
> show the full capabilities of our software, and there is a chance that users
> will not discover the remaining modules.  Unless the collection of modules
> in the repository is complete, it gives a false representation of what is
> available and possible.  I believe that a majority of upstream developers
> agree with this principle.  It is this that causes the comment "Upstream was
> quite hostile of packaging sword modules in Debian."

I agree with this, though the hostility was/is based a bit more than
just that.


> > As I see it, there are four possible solutions:
> >
> > 1. Continue the status quo.  The data can be extracted at any time
> >   by running the mod2osis(1) tool in the libsword8 (sword) package.
> >   You therefore could argue that the module format is simply a
> >   compressed version of the data, since running osis2mod(1), then
> >   mod2osis(1), is lossless---at least, that is the goal of the
> >   upstream sword library.

This is problematic. The Debian Free Software Guidelines says: The
program MUST include source code, and must allow distribution in source
code as well as compiled form. I guess it doesn't exclude compressed
(all packages are compressed!) files, but unless you can prove that
there is an open source program which will always produce the original
source code from the binary file, you are not in compliance. A "goal"
isn't enough. This is my interpretation which is based on several years
of aquaintance with FLOSS licencies and policies, but anyone can contact
a debian mailing list about this if needed.

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)