Bug#828218: libsoftware-license-perl in Debian has become fork of upstream code

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Dominique Dumont (2017-01-08 12:30:38)
> [cc'ed debian-perl team]
> 
> Hello Vasudev
> 
> Sorry for the late reply. I did not notice this bug until now.
> 
> On Sun, 26 Jun 2016 14:04:31 +0530 Vasudev Kamath <vasudev at copyninja.info> 
> wrote:
> > Just to give background for this bug report. I'm helping Jonas
> > Smedegaard who has adopted licensecheck tool from devscript and
> > creating a new library called App::LicenseCheck ¹. We intend this tool
> > to be useful cross distro and not only Debian. 
> 
> Which is a good thing.
> 
> > During the development
> > we noticed that libsoftware-license-perl has diverged too much from
> > upstream source.
> 
> What problem led you to this opinion ?

Tests written for upstream project fails when using the Debian package 
(and vice versa, but you clearly is of the opinion that you don't find 
the latter a problem you want to care about, so I will give up on that).


> > This library is patched not to adopt to Debian environment but to
> > change its behavior to suite Debian better.
> 
> I somewhat disagree. The fundamental behavior has not changed. Some features 
> are added because debian handles license somewhat diffrently:
> - usage of summary to point to /usr/share/common/licenses
> - usage of code word (like GPL-2+) when user is given a choice of license 
> version
> - usage of Expat keyword instead of MIT license
> 
> You're free not to use debian specific parts.
> 
> The only non-debian specific feature is the short-name-fallback patch [1] for 
> which there an upstream pull-request  [2]. You're welcome to voice your 
> opinion there to help RJBS decide whether to merge it or not.
> 
> > This means the package
> > effectively has become a fork of original upstream code.
> 
> Technically, this is not a fork, since these functionalities are provided as 
> patches applied on top of upstream License::Check.

Those patches on top of upstream code project cause the package in 
Debian to behave differently than the upstream package - for 
functionality provided obth upstream and in Debian (not only for 
functionality only available in Debian).


> > I'm filing bug with severity important because this will cause
> > interoperability problem. As an example if App::LicenseCheck is use
> > din other distro it might not work as expected because it was coded
> > using libsoftware-license-perl in Debian which is not same as the
> > original upstream. (just an example).
> 
> Which would mean either:
> - you're using a Debian specific part outside of Debian. It may be a bug on 
> your side, or you've found a valid use case outside of Debian for the Debian 
> specific parts. In the latter case, we can try to push some patches upstream 
> - you've found a bug where the fundamental behavior of Debian's 
> Software::License is changed. Then please give me details so I can reproduce 
> the problem.

The details are in the patches applied: They change upstream functions, 
not only add new functions (which arguably is bad enough in itself - but 
you've made it clear here that you disagree with that).


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
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