[Sugar-devel] Physics license mixes GPLv3+ and zlib?

[James Cameron]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 07:22:47PM -0500, Sebastian Silva wrote:
> On 13/06/17 17:55, James Cameron wrote:
>     G'day Sebastian,
> 
> Good evening James,
> 
>     Is this license combination compatible?  GPLv3+ of Physics with
>     an embedded binary of pybox2d under a zlib license.
> 
> I've no idea why you would ask me this, I am neither a licensing
> expert nor, yet, a contributor to Physics.

Because you are a contributor, your recent post in another thread
reminded me you have some licensing expertise, there are very few
active contributors, Physics-32 was released a few days ago, and I
already know what Walter thinks.  ;-)

> I'm guessing because I am interested in Debian packaging? Indeed
> Physics in Debian would be nice!

Yes.  Debian has Physics-7 at the moment, but Physics-32 is latest
upstream version.  My local package of Physics-32 is working fine on
Debian Stretch.  See also Debian Bug #855676.

> According to [1]https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ZLib
> : "License of ZLib (#ZLib): This is a free software license, and
> compatible with the GPL."

Thanks.

>     Also;
> 
>     - Physics has both COPYING and LICENSE with whitespace changes
>       only, which are GPLv3+; which should it be?
> 
> If the contents is the same, either one?

Agreed.  Pushed.
[master 607de73] Remove duplicate LICENSE, please use COPYING

>     - Physics/lib has LICENSE which is zlib,
> 
>     - Physics git, .tar.bz2 and .xo include lib/ binaries of
>       pybox2d,
> 
>     - no documentation for building, except in a commit [3],
> 
>     I've also a local dfsg branch which changes imports and removes
>     lib/ to have dist_source write Physics-32.1~dfsg.tar.bz2 which
>     can be imported by git-buildpackage.  If there is any other
>     interest, I can push this branch and tag v32.1~dfsg, though the
>     toolkit does not like text in version numbers.  Might this be
>     fixed?
> 
> I don't understand what you mean with your last question.

A side-issue.  The dist_source target for setup.py does not work with
a version suffix like ~dfsg, requiring a manual step to rename the
file; but it probably could be fixed so that it will work, but without
impacting the other code that assumes activity version numbers to be
decimal only.

(src/sugar3/bundle/bundlebuilder.py, Config gets version from
ActivityBundle, bundleversion.py accepts 1.2-peru, but not 1.2~dfsg.)

Something like;
https://gist.github.com/891386ccb02298c7e585dceda4311ff8 (untested)

> For sure there's interest in having a
> Debian-Free-Software-Guidelines-complying source to hopefully have
> Debian distribute this activity. If you could push this branch then
> it would be a good first step,

Pushed.
https://github.com/sugarlabs/physics/tree/dfsg

> then we could work together with pkg-sugar Team to upload
> it. Physics should be among the desired activities for Sugar Blend
> Huayruro project, not sure why it's not listed.

Thanks.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/