On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:01 AM, Martin Pitt <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Charlie, > > Charlie Smotherman [2011-01-04 2:26 -0600]: >> I am curious as to whats Ubuntu's policy on having *.swf files in the >> archive? > > We (as in the archive admins) mostly stick to the Debian position and > DFSG, with some exceptions like we consider GFDL as "free". > > From a legal POV it's primarily a license question. Many "strict free" > licenses like the GPL mandate that you distribute the "preferred form > of modification" (aka. "source") for all files, which *.swf is not. > For the same reason we reject GPL packages which ship PDFs without a > source (like ODF or LaTeX). > > So if a package wants to ship an swf, it needs a "weaker" license like > BSD or MIT. If it's GPL, it's not distributable at all. > > However, I expect that we still would put a package with just an swf > into multiverse, as it still violates the "source available" clause of > the DFSG.
I agree with everything Martin says above. For what it's worth, I packaged jPlayer recently for Natty, which uses mtasc to compile an swf file from source. If you're looking for a simple packaging example of how to build swf in a debian package, 'apt-get source jplayer'. Dustin -- ubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
