Debian licensing problem

[slavkozn]

Hi,

in last days i tried to add my nbc debian packages to official debian repositary. While talking with debian mentors (http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/ ... 00388.html) there is problem with licensing the GIFImage.pas, where the included restrictions are not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/ ... 00409.html). The Debian cannot addopt nbc, if it will include this software, or if license of this software piece will not be changed. While the Debian is base for most Linux distributions, this is wrong news for a lot of Linux users.

Please, is some chance to replace this GIFImage.pas with another library (with more free license) or change this license?

regards

[afanofosc]

I do not think that GIFImage.pas is included for any platform other than Win32. If you compile NBC or any of my tools with FPC then GIFImage is excluded from the build. It is referred to in the uses clause in uRICComp.pas like this:

{$IFNDEF FPC}
Graphics, JPEG, pngimage, GIFImage
{$ELSE}

and in uNXTImage.pas like this:

{$IFNDEF FPC}
JPEG, MMSystem, pngimage, GIFImage, uRICImage,
{$ENDIF}

So there is no reason to include GIFImage in the source distribution of NBC for Debian or any other non-Windows platform. It looks like I may need to change the bricxcc.mak makefile to not include the png\* and GIFImage.pas files.

John Hansen