Soyuz needs to switch to obtaining Packages-arch-specific from non-obsolete source

Currently, Soyuz has a manually updated (and slightly forked) version of P-a-s that should be up to date with the latest upstream.

Due to us losing upstream control, and already having to fork, I'm trying to convince core-dev that they really want to maintain their own forked bzr branch that we can then pull from for Soyuz use.

Is the "slightly forked"-ness documented anywhere?

Currently, no, although the only thing forked right now is allowing grub2 to build on lpia.

It boils down a bit to the question if you need P-a-s to be forked for every release, which Debian needs but which was only recently introduced. If not, we could easily inject entries into sid's Packages-arch-specific. As stated in the announcement we would be happy about bug reports in the Debian BTS to add records. lpia is an especially easy case because it's no official Debian architecture and thus does not affect Debian's own infrastructure at all.

I just pushed a patch allowing grub2 on lpia into the packages-arch-specific repository. The exported file is now also available through HTTPS on https://buildd.debian.org/quinn-diff/Packages-arch-specific

I've created:

  https://code.launchpad.net/~cjwatson/packages-arch-specific/sid (bzr mirror of your git branch)
  https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/packages-arch-specific/ubuntu

Currently these two are identical, and I don't have a problem with them remaining so if at all possible - we'll be happy to file bugs for updates - but of course we'd like to control our own infrastructure. Putting it in bzr makes it trivial to grant access to the ubuntu-core-dev team.

Adam, could you please arrange for our buildds to use lp:~ubuntu-core-dev/packages-arch-specific/ubuntu? Thanks.

Philipp, is it possible to have some kind of licence statement for the Packages-arch-specific file? Creating the Launchpad project involved stating a licence, and I had to say "I don't know, but I guess it's probably free software" or words to that effect, which makes me a little uncomfortable.

Colin,

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 07:35:32PM -0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> Philipp, is it possible to have some kind of licence statement for the
> Packages-arch-specific file? Creating the Launchpad project involved
> stating a licence, and I had to say "I don't know, but I guess it's
> probably free software" or words to that effect, which makes me a little
> uncomfortable.

sorry, but I for myself can't. The only persons that could would be
Ryan Murray (neuro), LaMont Jones and Adam Conrad.

Kind regards,
Philipp Kern

No license and no copyright notification, in my opinion I think that
makes it public domain.

It's just a configuration file - nevertheless, the developers might
have a different opinion.. :)

I've mailed Ryan, LaMont, and Adam for advice (also James Troup, not mentioned by Philipp but I'm pretty sure he's committed to P-a-s in the past!).

Savvas: Copyright law traditionally has a different opinion.

Sorry about the comment above, I was not aware it was under copyright, since it wasn't expressed on the headers of the file itself. :)

Soyuz has been updated to pull from the Ubuntu branch Colin created. Closing this bug, and the licensing discussion can carry on out of band.

For the record, while I don't agree with the "anything vaguely looking like a config file can't possibly be covered by copyright" position, as it's a pretty nasty grey area at times, I can say that in the case of P-a-s, I've never considered it copyrightable material, and certainly never consciously cared about applying either a copyright or a license to my contributions to it.

Colin,

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 07:33:23PM -0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> I've created:
>
> https://code.launchpad.net/~cjwatson/packages-arch-specific/sid (bzr mirror of your git branch)
> https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/packages-arch-specific/ubuntu
>
> Currently these two are identical, and I don't have a problem with them
> remaining so if at all possible - we'll be happy to file bugs for
> updates - but of course we'd like to control our own infrastructure.
> Putting it in bzr makes it trivial to grant access to the ubuntu-core-
> dev team.

but please communicate clearly that bug reports are still expected,
even if more could access it directly now.

I would be very unhappy to discover that there were silent changes to the
Ubuntu branch which just aswell apply to Debian. And of course you also
get work if the patch is applied in Debian but with, say, different
whitespace settings. (The file is sadly not coherent in that regard.)

Is the ubuntu-core-dev branch autosynced?

Kind regards,
Philipp Kern

I'll try to find somewhere appropriate to document that bug reports are expected.

The branch isn't currently autosynced, although when Launchpad gains git->bzr imports in the future this would be straightforward to do. In the meantime I'm just checking frequently and will probably rig something up to notify me when I need to do so.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 01:22:28AM -0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> I'll try to find somewhere appropriate to document that bug reports are
> expected.
>
> The branch isn't currently autosynced, although when Launchpad gains
> git->bzr imports in the future this would be straightforward to do. In
> the meantime I'm just checking frequently and will probably rig
> something up to notify me when I need to do so.

You could pipe <email address hidden> into something that acts
on the commit mails that go there.

Kind regards,
Philipp Kern