netpbm-Port

[Chuck Swiger]

Hi, Bryan--

Bryan Henderson wrote:
>> In particular, [hpcdtoppm], mentioned in 
>> docs/COPYRIGHT.PATENT:
>> ...
>> violates the Open Source Definition, and should be brought to the attention 
>> of the maintainer for replacement or removal.
> 
> Thanks for including me on this email (I am the maintainer of Netpbm).  I
> didn't know Sourceforge was so restrictive.

Perhaps you should ask the SourceForge admins and see what they say.  They may 
have other suggestions, although I believe that I'm correct when I say that SF 
wants hosted projects to be fully compliant with the OSD.

In particular, it would be nice to identify and resolve whatever is in the 
project so that Debian, FreeBSD, and anyone else could redistribute netpbm on 
CD...at least, if that's what you want to do.

 > I'll replace that program with
> a reference to some other place to download it.  But first I will see if 
> the author is interested in freeing up the program.  In the 9 years since
> he distributed it with the "no selling" restriction, a lot has changed.

Indeed, if you could get permission to redistribute that utility, that would be 
better.

[ ...HTML as manpages... ]
>>if Bryan doesn't want to maintain manpages, fine: either someone 
>>else needs to step up and do so, or else it won't be done.
> 
> Right, and I'll cooperate any way I can that doesn't require me to do
> a substantial amount of additional clerical work, or give up
> distributing HTML or publishing the docs on the Web.  (As it stands,
> the Netpbm documentation effort for me is 99% writing and 1%
> distribution overhead, which is how I like it).

Thanks for doing what you can with regard to the documentation.  It doesn't look 
like any individual is maintaining the FreeBSD port, but perhaps aba (who is 
taking over as the Debian package maintainer?) has some thoughts.

-- 
-Chuck