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Re: gnuplot

> This is not for public release yet, please.
> 
> Richard Stallman asked the "gnuplot" developers to explicitly allow
> distribution of modified binaries of their program, and they refused.
> This means gnuplot has to be distributed in source (with diff) form only.
> You can't even put the binary in non-free. Barf with a spoon.

It must be that I'm not a lawer, but this raises all kinds of questions
with me:

  - Apparently the gnuplot team does allow "compilation" of the
    source by gzip (gzip also reads strings in the source file,
    and does all kinds of funny things with the source). Yes,
    compilation by gcc is very differnt (irreversable, for example),
    but how can this be legally enforced?
 
  - Would it be OK if I (gnuplot maintainer) made the .deb and the .tar.gz
    essentially identical, and put a "./debian/rules build" etc. in
    the postinst? (still, I agree, the package needs to go into
    non-free).

  - we are trying to move to auto-compiled binaries, where maintainers
    only upload source packages, and the binaries are automatically
    compiled. Would that mean I'd have to include some delibarate
    error in the gnuplot diffs that would make those compiles fail?
    (Well, only if I don't take the approach mentioned above).
  
  - Has anyone mentioned to them that soon (hopefuly) gnuplot
    will be removed from sunsite? I.e., that they are rather lonely
    in their approach to free software?

  - From the copyright file:
       	* Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to
       	* distribute the modified code.  Modifications are to be distributed
      	* as patches to released version.
    So, I uuencode  the original gnuplot binary, I uuencode the
    debian gnuplot binary, create a diff (the two uu.files will be
    completely different, so the diff will just contain both files),
    and distribute those files. Would that be OK?

Barf with a spoon.

-- 
joost witteveen, joostje@debian.org
#!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
#what's this? see http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/


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