Report forwarded to debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org, David Morris <bweaver@worf.netins.net>:
Bug#7598; Package mh.   debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.orgDavid Morris <bweaver@worf.netins.net>  Sorry, this message was lost when this bug report was restored from a backup.   Acknowledgement sent to sgk@kleinmann.com:
New bug report received and forwarded. Copy sent to David Morris <bweaver@worf.netins.net>.   sgk@kleinmann.com  Sorry, this message was lost when this bug report was restored from a backup.   Received: (at submit) by bugs.debian.org; 24 Feb 1997 00:46:03 +0000 Received: (qmail 68 invoked from network); 24 Feb 1997 00:45:59 -0000 Received: from kleinmann.com (root@204.215.142.65) by master.debian.org with SMTP; 24 Feb 1997 00:45:58 -0000 Received: from sgk.tiac.net (sgk@lo [127.0.0.1]) by kleinmann.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA16708 for ; Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:46:48 -0500 Message-Id: <199702240046.TAA16708@kleinmann.com> Reply-to: sgk@kleinmann.com To: submit@bugs.debian.org Subject: Questionable copyright and pedigree for MH Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:46:48 -0500 From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" Package: mh Version: 6.8.4-10 The copyright file in the Debian mh package reads: "This is version 6.8.4 for the MH mail system, packaged for the Debian Linux distribution by David Morris (bweaver@worf.netins.net), from sources available at ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh." This is incorrect. The current version of MH in that directory is 6.8.3, dated somewhere around 1993. The 6.8.4 "version" of MH is an unofficial patch update, and the sources for the diffs which (may have) produced the update are in ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/updates/. Apparently there are additional linux patches in ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/patches/linux/ which are meant to be applied after the so-called 6.8.4 patches. I believe there are several bugs here. The copyright statement should say literally where the source files were obtained. The debian/rules file should scriptify exactly how to obtain the Debian package from the specified source files. It is not clear at this point whether the linux patches were included, and if so, whether they were included before or after the unofficial 6.8.4 patches. In late January, Tony Nugent provided a combined 6.8.4-linux patch at: ftp://ftp.gw.com/pub/unix/mail/mh/patches/linux/. (That is, he patched 6.8.3 with the so-called 6.8.4 diffs, then applied the linux diffs, and then produced a set of 6.8.4-linux diffs.) But in early February, Tony reported that A.P.Harris noted the need for _another_ patch which Harris had gleaned from Debian's 6.8.4-2 release of MH! This is now getting circular. The real sources and patches that have gone into the current Debian release of MH should be clearly documented, and the way in which those patches were applied to the original 6.8.3 source tree should be scriptitied in the debian/rules file. Susan Kleinmann   Information forwarded to debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org, David Morris <bweaver@worf.netins.net>:
Bug#7598; Package mh.   debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.orgDavid Morris <bweaver@worf.netins.net>  Sorry, this message was lost when this bug report was restored from a backup.   Acknowledgement sent to Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@calder.med.miami.edu>:
Extra info received and forwarded to list. Copy sent to David Morris <bweaver@worf.netins.net>.   Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@calder.med.miami.edu>  Sorry, this message was lost when this bug report was restored from a backup.   Received: (at 7598) by bugs.debian.org; 24 Feb 1997 13:54:14 +0000 Received: (qmail 839 invoked from network); 24 Feb 1997 13:54:07 -0000 Received: from net-1.adj.com (206.190.9.2) by master.debian.org with SMTP; 24 Feb 1997 13:54:07 -0000 Received: from calder.med.miami.edu (calder.med.miami.edu [129.171.78.4]) by net-1.adj.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA28452; Mon, 24 Feb 1997 07:47:02 -0600 Received: (from mdorman@localhost) by calder.med.miami.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA03546; Mon, 24 Feb 1997 08:51:27 -0500 To: sgk@kleinmann.com, 7598@bugs.debian.org Subject: Re: Bug#7598: Questionable copyright and pedigree for MH References: <199702240046.TAA16708@kleinmann.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.100) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Michael Alan Dorman Date: 24 Feb 1997 08:51:27 -0500 In-Reply-To: "Susan G. Kleinmann"'s message of Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:46:48 -0500 Message-ID: <87hgj2nwgc.fsf@calder.med.miami.edu> Lines: 30 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.2.40/Emacs 19.34 "Susan G. Kleinmann" writes: > The real sources and patches that have gone into the current Debian > release of MH should be clearly documented, and the way in which > those patches were applied to the original 6.8.3 source tree should > be scriptitied in the debian/rules file. The lineage, for the record: MH-6.8.3 + MH-6.8.4 patches + portions of the old MH-linux patches + Lots of my own work to correct the problems with the old MH-linux patches. A couple of other notes: The MH-6.8.4 patches were released by the current maintainer of MH, therefore I see no reason to pretend they're unofficial just because the maintainer hasn't bothered to produce a patched source release. Also, I doubt there is any need for the patches recently posted to c.o.l.a---they're probably all superceded by the work I did, and I suspect they might not do as good a job for some stuff, as I spent some time analysing what the old patches were doing and was able to eliminate some unnecessary indirection that the old patches had done. Furthermore, MH is technically PD, and I believe the old MH patches were also made PD, so technically the source is as much ours as anyones. Mike.   Forwarded to bug-mh@ics.uci.edu; Maintainer for mh is Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>.

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Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 14:36:23 +0100
From: Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>

[please put the Cc: addresses above into any reply to this message]

Hi,

I'm not certain to what extent you would consider this a bug, but the fact 
that mh-6.8.4 is not available as a tar (but only as a patch from 6.8.3) makes 
people think that the Debian maintainer made this version up, and so causes 
suspicion.

If you could put the tar of 6.8.4 on ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers, Phil.




Reply sent to Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>:
You have marked bug as forwarded.   Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>  Sorry, this message was lost when this bug report was restored from a backup.