[Radiance-general] Radiance in Debian!

[Axel Jacobs]

Hi Bernd,

I've read your post to radiance-general, and am just installing a
Debian-unstable in Qemu to give you some more feedback. This has been
taking forever--my box isn't particularly fast, and is in dire need of
some upgrading. Will get back to you...

I have a few thoughts that I'd like to share with you, irrespective of
the actual install. Please don't take them as rants, and feel free to
completely ignore them if you feel they're out of place. I seem to
have a talent of always striking the wrong string with people...

Before I go on, let me mention that I have not actually packaged debs
myself, but I did roll some Radiance RPMs many years ago, and know how
you must have been suffering from the non-standard build/install of
Radiance. I could never release my RPMs, since this was years before
Radiance went OS, and my explicit request with LBL got turned down.

a) I've been browsing the Debian pages for the best part of an hour
now, but just can't find the relevant page. I might be completely
wrong (this could well have come from the Fedora packaging
guidelines), but something tells me that auxiliary data (such as the
*-materials.deb) should actually go into *-data.deb. This is more
general, e.g. some of the .cal files that you have in there could be
for, let's say some fancy rtrace projection, rather than a parametric
material definition. I believe the general idea behind the *-data is
that it is not required to run the software--many games have extra
characters/cars/worlds in *-data.

b) Have you checked with debian-legal yet whether the Radiance license
is ok for inclusion of the package in Debian proper, rather than
non-free? I've been studying the DFSG and Software License FAQ
(http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), and ended up having
lots of scribble (=doubts) on my print-out.

The Radiance license is not OSI approved, this is what the FAQ has
this to say about self-made licenses:

"But it is our strong and heartfelt advice that using a tried-and-true
license is best for almost all purposes. Even large corporations with
dozens of lawyers on staff itching to write their own license have
found this out the hard way, as in the Mozilla license saga, or the
Djvu license story, or the trouble Trolltech had with the Qt license."

The point most relevant (and potentially hindering) seems to be this one:

"# Q: Are clickwrap licenses okay? (Meaning licenses require anyone
receiving the software to click on an I AGREE button indicating ascent
to the terms.)

"A: No, not unless the clickwrap stuff can be removed. Even aside from
freeness, as a practical matter such a clickwrap requirement would be
an unreasonable burden upon our users.

"To be technical, in principle one could put the GPL in a clickwrap
and the license would be perfectly fine. But once you add a
requirement that the software must be distributed via the clickwrap,
or that clickwrap code cannot be removed from the software, your
license becomes non-free. Since clickwraps without such a requirement
are a bit pointless, clickwrap licenses are almost always non-free."

I understand that technically there would be no problem with throwing
up an 'agree/decline' window upon install, but I think this would be
not be solving the problem.

What I do not know is whether this click-wrap is merely an artifact
from the days when Radiance was non-free (in which case we might be
able to lobby LBL as the copyright holder to get it removed), or if it
has been left in there for a purpose.

If you haven't done any legal checkup yet, I'd be more than happy to
offer my help.

c) This, again, is too long ago to remember: There used to be a
Radiance RPM in Turbolinux, and I'm fairly convinced that a Debian
package also existed. One of them actually packaged it into
radiance-nox11 and radiance-x11. The idea was that to use Radiance in
render farm, all the extra X11 requirements would not have to be
installed. I'm not suggesting that you follow this approach, but do
give it a thought.

d) Your communication with Greg happened off-list. I feel that many
Radiance developers (and users, too) would be very interested in
reading though the thread. BTW, this is also the reason why I'm
posting this to radiance-devel, rather than just to you personally. I
strongly believe that the Radiance development process should be as
transparent as possible. Anyhow -- is there any chance of you making
this conversation available to the rest of us (with Greg's permission,
of course)? I am particularly interested in what Greg has to say about
libtiff. It seems you linked to the system one, not the one which
comes with Radiance. Does that mean that the official one can be
trusted now?

e) There's more in the pipeline, but let me get my hands dirty first.

So much for now

Take care

Axel