Hi everyone,
TL;DR: I'm interested in contributing to the Games SIG and taking
advantage of Fedora's new, more permissive emulator policy! I have a
question about adding a license file in accordance with the
SIG/Games/Packaging guidelines.
My name is Daniel Moerner. I am interested in joining the Games SIG
interest group and contributing to Fedora. I've been using Linux
full-time since 2007, and in my earlier years I contributed to Debian
development, focusing on tools for lightweight WMs and interpreters for
functional programming languages. I was a member of the
debian-maintainers keyring from 2009-2010, before stepping down due to
lack of time. I am now a PhD student in philosophy, and I have all the
time in the world.
I'm interested in the Games SIG because one of my main interests is
retro game emulators, for two reasons. First, I find emulators
technically interesting. Second, as a sort of historian by trade, I
value the archival nature of emulators. Even when companies stop
producing the relevant hardware, a high-quality emulator can remain.
I was excited to see the recent change in Fedora's policy on including
emulators.[1] This opens the door to packaging a number of great FOSS
emulators which, following the guidelines, compile and run without
needing any closed-source firmware or ROM files. I am interested in
supporting the packaging of emulators abiding by these new guidelines,
both through Q & A work and through packaging them myself. I'd also be
happy to do other games Q & A work.
I've already started working on packaging an emulator for Fedora; I
chose to start with higan[2], an actively developed, very high accuracy
emulator for retro Nintendo systems which is licensed under the GPLv3
and has been included in Debian since 2011. I have built the package and
tested it to the best of my ability with fedora-review; it is available
on copr.[3] I plan to submit a review ticket very soon, I am hoping to
hear back from upstream about the (minor) patches I applied to the
source. When I submit the review ticket, I'll CC this list with my
general self-introduction. I welcome any help now and later!
I do have one question about licensing that came up as I was working on
this package. The SIGs/Games/Packaging Guidelines[4] say the following:
"License file must be included to clarify legal status, even if upstream
doesn't provide it in the source tarball."
Higan doesn't include a separate license file; rather, the license for
each component is stated in a one-line comment in the primary header
file for that component. (I know this is not ideal.) Following this
guideline, I made a license file of my own detailing the license for
each component and the header file in which it can be found stated by
the author.[5] I also included the full text of GPLv3. But then I
noticed the following two "should" comments in fedora-review:
"[ ]: Package does not include license text files separate from upstream
[ ]: If (and only if) the source package includes the text of the
license(s) in its own file, then that file, containing the text of
the license(s) for the package is included in %license."
It looks like by following the SIG Packaging Guidelines and adding a
license file, I am violating these "should" recommendations. Obviously
they are only "shoulds", but I wanted to confirm that I am understanding
the license requirements of the Games SIG correctly.
I'm excited to contribute to Fedora!
Best,
Daniel
[1]
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel-announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/thread/OCIB2WAZ6DF3HJZV2OWYOTNRTUZZ6VRX/
[2] https://byuu.org/emulation/higan/
[3] COPR: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/dmoerner/higan/
SRPM:
https://copr-be.cloud.fedoraproject.org/results/dmoerner/higan/fedora-26-x86_64/00498707-higan/higan-101-1.fc26.src.rpm
SPEC:
http://copr-dist-git.fedorainfracloud.org/cgit/dmoerner/higan/higan.git/tree/higan.spec?id=6dcef5efc36498c77b370f17cc4ffe3f9214ce79
[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Games/Packaging
[5] https://paste.fedoraproject.org/526144/
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