Hello,
I'm a Debian user who intends to package umoria (a roguelike game) for
Debian. There is an existing ITP in the WNPP, but it's been outstanding for
over 1000 days, and I've spoken to the developer who has agreed to let me
take it over. However, this is my first Debian package, so I guess I'll be
needing a mentor. I have package now that seems to work, but I'd like to
have someone take a look at it before I unleash it, and it seems this may
even be necessary.
So, my first question is how do I pick up a package that hasn't been
orphaned? In my reply to the current developer, I asked him if he could
orphan it, but he hasn't replied yet, and he may not know the procedure
anyways. Is it possible for me to grab it from him based on his private
mail to me and the fact that it is so old?
Also, umoria is (to my reading) non-free. The licence forbids it from
being used in a commercial manner (see below for an excerpt from my
debian/copyright file). Is this a problem? The binary is also setuid
(games). I can probably change the source so it's just setgid, but I
haven't done that yet. Is that ok?
Beyond these, I have some general questions about developing for/under
Debian that I haven't found explicitly mentioned in the docs (although there
are so many of them I've only gone through them once, so I might very well
have missed something): (1) porting to other platforms is not (necessarily)
my job, right? Can/should I help out in this regard? When I become a
Debian developer, I will presumably have access to machines on other
architectures -- should I take care of porting in that case? (2) What is
the difference between a Debian developer and a Debian maintainer? Is a
developer just anyone with a package in the distribution (once
identification verified etc as in the Developer's Reference), even if it was
mentorized?
(3) I have slink (stable) installed on my debian machines, so of course
umoria is compiled against older libraries. Is this a problem? I can
upgrade one of the machines to unstable if necessary, but that machine is a
lot slower, so I'd really rather not. (4) Also because I'm only running
slink, the only GPG available to me (packaged, that is) is an ancient one
(version 0.4.3-1) which I really don't want to run. Hopefully this won't be
an issue soon because potato will be out, but is it otherwise a problem?
Many questions. Thanks for your attention.
below, part of the debian/copyright file for umoria:
----
Copyright:
(from source files:)
Copyright (c) 1989-94 James E. Wilson, Robert A. Koeneke
This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research, and
not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement are
included in all such copies.
(from man page:)
Moria may be copied and modified freely, but may
not be sold or marketed IN ANY FORM without the permis-
sion and written consent of the authors Robert Alan
Koeneke and James E. Wilson. We retain all copyrights
to this program, in either the original or modified
forms, and no violation, deletion, or change of the
copyright notice is allowed. Furthermore, we will have
no liability or responsibility to any user with respect
to loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by this
program.
----
Rene Weber
