Cristian Morales Vega wrote:
The problem isn't patching at all but it's about maintaining patches that won't be accepted upstream.
An immediated problem.
Could you summarize the situation for the ones that just arrived? I have been reading the discussion from the fork time and the situation isn't exactly clear to me. - The problem has something to do with cdrtools being relicensed, in part, as CDDL. - At first only the build system was CDDL, correct? We could have "just" changed the build system. Then "real" code was licensed also as CDDL, so changing the build system isn't an option anymore. - The CDDL is incompatible with the GPL... but cdrtools mixes them???? - The Wikipedia says Ubuntu asked Eben Moglen and he said Ubuntu could not distribute cdrtools.
The problem started way long before CDDL and openSolaris were dreamt of. You would have to go way back in the kernel mailing list archives, but a very short summary is --- Linux is out of step with other OS's, so Linux has to change to accomodate cdrtools, threats by Joerg to no longer support Linux. It got quite heated and went on a long time with one man telling the kernel developers they have to adapt the kernel to suit his bit of software. Like such arguments before and since, an alternative was built and all argument ceased forthwith. If cdrkit is unmaintained, there is nothing stopping anyone willing and able from taking it up, better than opening in a can of worms to see if they are still alive and dangerous. Anyone remember how "indispensible" BitKeeper was said to be to kernel development, until Linus knocked up "git" as a quick alternative and since then the number of repositories using git have been increasing steadily.
...so, can openSUSE distribute cdrtools with patches? Why? can openSUSE distribute cdrtools without patches? Why? Are openSUSE specific patches perhaps acceptable in the GPL code but no in the CDDL code? If openSUSE can distribute cdrtools without patches but no with them... exactly what is the problem for which upstream doesn't wants to accept patches? Linux has to do things his way, he doesn't have to accommodate Linux. Joerg writes cdrtools and distributes it, it's "his" personal project and his alone.
What are the problems with cdrkit? Latest release is from 2008/10/26 and the latest change in SVN is from 49 days ago. Not exactly the most active project but neither seems dead.
If we assume that Joerg isn't the font of all knowledge in this area, cdrkit is more accessible and manageable. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org