Re: [Plplot-devel] PLplot Debian package

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2017-07-11 13:42+0200 Ole Streicher wrote:

> Dear Alan,
>
> thank you very much for your quick (and very positive) answer!
> Concerning the upstream changes: you could for the moment just drop the
> "debian/" subdir. It will be replaced anyway during the packaging
> process, and therefore no longer maintained in your git and may be
> misleading for others. For any other changes, I need to look through and
> will come back when I have proposals.

Hi Ole:

With regard to the above Debian "issue":

I agree this confusion between upstream and Debian is not ideal.
However, Debian packaging is important to us since it does reveal some
deficiencies (at least from the Debian point of view) with the
upstream version.  And I do have sufficient Debian packaging knowledge
that I can interpret a debian subdirectory tree even if I don't have
sufficient knowledge to create one on my own.  So I think the best
thing to do is to replace everything in our now out-dated debian
subdirectory with a README that shows how to get convenient access to
the latest debian packaging information that you are working on. So I
would appreciate you supplying that information, and once I have that
from you, I will make that proposed change.

>
> For the csiro license problem:
>
> On 11.07.2017 12:59, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> Apparently there is licensing text for the full modern versions of
>> nn and csa at <https://github.com/sakov/nn-c/blob/master/nn/LICENSE>
>> and <https://github.com/sakov/csa-c/blob/master/csa/LICENSE>. I am
>> not a license lawyer, but the latter looks like a simple free
>> software license to me. If you agree, and, better yet, if you can
>> identify what free license it is (some form of BSD??), then it is
>> likely it is license that you will be able to immediately identify as
>> consistent with Debian's DFSG.
>
> This is a kind-of simplified BSD-3-Clause license, as f.e. this one:
>
> https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
>
> The difference is mainly that the original second condition is
> removed/merged into the first one, and the third is then renumbered to
> be the second.

Our e-mails crossed, but it appears we independently arrived at that
same conclusion.

>
>> In which case, it should be a simple matter regardless of whatever
>> agreement he made with Rafael in 2003+ to convince Pavel to license
>> our stripped version for both nn and csa that we adopted in 2003
>> under that same free software license.
>
> If PLplot can use the modern versions of the library source (or the
> first version from 2009 on github [1]), yes. IMO that would be the
> simplest way.

The issue with that solution is Pavel's unstripped version of nn has
consistently used un-free triangle forever and Joao immediately
switched the stripped version to use the free qhull library instead.
But if ever Pavel made the decision to switch from his triangle
dependency to a free library like qhull, then presumably it would be
possible for us to adjust PLplot to use (and presumably distribute)
that modern nn library ourselves under that modified but
DSFG-compliant variant of the 3-clause BSD license currently used for
modern csa.  But in any case I would prefer not to do that work (and
similarly for adjusting us to the full modern csa library) since the
stripped down versions have been fine for our needs all these years.

>> In sum, I think to deal with this licensing issue, the following 4
>> steps are needed:
>>
>> 1. Identify the modern full csa licensing from the above text.  In
>> the following steps I assume you will be able to identify it as a
>> well-known free software license that is already known to be
>> compatible with the DFSG.
>
> It is, for sure. However, not a common one (as far as I know).

That is good news that Debian would be happy with that license
assuming we are allowed by Pavel to adopt it.

>
>> 2. Find a modern e-mail address for Pavel (surely github provides
>> that in some way, but I cannot find it).
>
> I just cloned the repository and looked into his commits :-) There is
> one real E-mail address: <pav...@gm...>. This also f.e. appears
> in the README of the enkf-c repository.

Thanks! I should have thought of git as the best tool for getting a
reliable e-mail address.  :-)

>
>> 3. Ask Pavel to allow us to relicense the stripped version of nn and
>> csa that we adopted in 2003 [...]
>
>> 4. Upstream change: Remove the misleading lib/nn/README and
>> lib/csa/README files and replace those with lib/nn/LICENSE and
>> lib/csa/LICENSE [...]
>
>> If you are willing to deal with the first two of these issues I am
>> willing to deal with the third and fourth, but if you would also
>> like to follow through with the third as well (quoting any part of
>> this e-mail you feel is relevant) that would be even more helpful!
>> In sum, I am looking forward with your help to finishing the above
>> steps to remove completely the licensing uncertainty for these two
>> PLplot libraries.
>
> Would you contact him? This may be even better since I am just coming
> from aside (and you know more about the history of the inclusion of his
> libraries). If the gmail address doest not work, you could even just
> open an issue in the nn-c or csa-c library to get in contact.
>
> I am however quite happy that the problems seems to be solvable that easy!

OK. Thanks very much for confirming the modern csa license is
DSFG-compliant and for finding Pavel's modern e-mail address.

I will follow up soon by contacting Pavel at the gmail address you
found above with a CC to you, and we will see what he says.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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