2006/11/30, Alvaro Martinez Echevarria <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> ------------------- Reason ------------------- >> RoM; license problems. >> >> So this bug won't be fixed in Debian. > >Well, let's think about this a little bit. According to what I >read in 270695, there's a problem with one specific catalog, >which is derived from the Yale catalog for which it is not clear >if redistribution of modifications is allowed.
It is clear that redistribution of modifications is *not* allowed. We have no evidence to the contrary. > But there's a yale >package in the system containing the original data. True, I separated star catalogs which did not have a free license to non-free a while back. This includes yale (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/yale). You will find a good introduction on the attempts to separate non-free data at Kevin McCarthy's page: http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/ (starplot upstream and Debian maintainer) which produced the 'startdata-common' package (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/stardata-common) We have been very quiet on this issues, but you can also find some more information browsing the 'startdata-common' information (Mailing list: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/stardata-common-devel/, CVS: http://alioth.debian.org/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/stardata-common/?cvsroot=stardata-common) although the work there is stalled there. AFAIK, currently only Starplot uses the gliese or yale packages, in such a way that, if they are installed before the package they will get converted to Starplot's format. >So, big deal: >I volunteer to write a small program that will generate YBS.edb >in xephem format from the contents of the original yale catalog, >hence getting around the licensing problems. Would that be >acceptable? Javi, what do you think? (incidentally, I know Javi >from school many years ago :). Writting a script similar to the one used by Starplot should not be too difficult and is entirely acceptable. If implemented that would mean that xephem could be re-introduced into Debian. The question would remain, however, if Xephem could work *without* that catalog (or with a DFSG-free one, such as Hipparcos). I.e. if xephem needs to be installed with yale and have a stardata catalogue then it would have to be moved over to contrib (as it would Depend: on non-free stuff), if it can work standalone (without installing non-free stuff or by converting a DFSG stardata catalogue ) it could be kept in main. Consequently, if xephem was converted to be able to use also the Hipparcos catalogue (or any other free catalogue) it could be kept in main. BTW, this is what I did for Openuniverse, although I have not (yet) made the Hipparcos data set a separate package complying with the policy implemented in 'stardata-common'. HTH Javier
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