I'm a packager for pkgsrc, used on NetBSD and SmartOS (Illumos), and which runs on about 20 other systems. I haven't yet packaged WSJT-X, but it's on my eventually list. This is 99% about not having spare time, but I am also unenthused about the non-Free aspects, both from a philosophical viewpoint and because of the huge portability problems caused by programs wihtout available source code.
I have a strong preference for KVASD being handled as an entirely separate package, so that someone could use it without WSJT-X to do the computations it is useful for. Then, WSJT-X could optionally use it if present, and also function without it. That would allow WJST-X builds to be included in binary package collections. If KVASD were required, that would block anything that depended on it. That's assuming KVASD can't be distributed in binary form; searching for KVASD license didn't turn up specific license text. pkgsrc does distribute non-Free packages as long as the upstream's license permits distribution. Having a free software program ask to download non-free code isn't against the license terms, but to me it feels against the spirit. (As an aside: Presumably KVASD can't be hosted on sourceforge; my understanding is that the free hosting is only for code with a Free or Open Source license. I did find binaries in svn, but, they didn't seem to have a license and clearly aren't covered by the top-level GPL2. But I'm a bit confused by the svn layout.) There's another issue, which is that it's unlikely KVASD will be available for more than a small fraction of the OS/version/cpu combinations that pkgsrc supports. I don't really have a good suggestion for addressing that. It's normal in pkgsrc to have any libgcc runtime (beyond what's provided by the base system) available as a package. So if there were control files for a kvasd package that could build binaries from the (not distributed) source tarball, the resulting binary packages should work. Or a package can package a dynamically linked executable that assumes particular support libraries in standard places. Presumably you are avoiding a full static link because of the LPGL requirement to permit relinking (which makes sense). Longer term, it would be good to have a roadmap for removing the need/desire to use non-Free code, as it seems to be causing signficant practical problems (with the resulting lack of portability arguably being the largest issue). I've seen some comments on the list, but am unclear on the status/prognosis. How bad is it for someone to choose not to use KVASD? Does it cost them decode performance, or CPU time, or both? Or is it really not a feasible choice? The documentation I've found doesn't address this; it just says "go get this non-free code, with an implicit "assuming it's available for the os/version/cpu that you want to run it on"". 73 de n1dam
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