Hi Daniel and everybody, It's a reply for the Daniel's message https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/10/msg00481.html
I encounter the topic sometimes, how about imapsync back into Debian? As the author of imapsync, my quick answer is yes, I would be pleased to see imapsync brought back into Debian! Now, for the guys who have time to read, I detail my answer below. > But it seems that imapsync is no longer available in the Debian > repositories [2] because the developer was implementing a payment > model for obtaining this software and then maybe he thought that > Debian could affect their income so he gave a resounding "No" [3] to > continue distributing it. A very respectable decision, I think. My final words on this discussion five years ago, in January 2011, were: "Do what you want, I promise I won't complain anymore about the fact imapsync is on Debian or not." It's here: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2011/01/msg00058.html Those words are still available today and now I am also able to transform the previous No in Yes. Even more: Yes, I would be proud to see imapsync in Debian again! So why I've changed my mind about imapsync in Debian? Well, the true reason for my initial "No" was that imapsync in the current Debian of those times was at least 2 years older than the current public imapsync (that part is ok) and I was somehow fed up to receive Debian users bugs reports directly about bugs already fixed upstream for a long time. The new business model was secondary since it was a try. The free and gratis github copy of imapsync started on the 12 March 2011, just one month after imapsync was chosen to disappear from Debian Sid. Imapsync disappearance in Debian was decided by its Debian packager, not by me, not because of my "no" once clarified by the "do what you want", but because the packager wanted to package only free and gratis software from upstream, a respectable condition for someone also working for free. He also asked me if I wanted to package imapsync in Debian myself and I didn't take the charge. Free, gratis, up to date imapsync download sites have always been there, legally, fully permitted by the author in the license file or directly. Imapsync has been packaged for a long time in Centos, Fedora, Gentoo, ArchLinux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD. This has never weakened my imapsync business, never. I've now come to the following conclusion about free software sales (and even non-free): If the price is fair enough for them, people who want to buy buy, people who don't want to buy don't buy, no matter the license. Think about when you do buy software and when you don't, and why. Do it truly, don't fool yourself. > I was checking the official site [4] of imapsync and even though the > developer seems to have a paid business model, it seems that the > source code is still available. In fact he has documented the Debian > installation process [5] and there he makes mention of downloading a > tarball. Although I do not see a link on where to get the > tarball. Maybe I'm missing something? The imapsync Debian installation document [5] https://imapsync.lamiral.info/INSTALL.d/INSTALL.Debian.txt says: The license is now "No limits to do anything with this work and this license". Full dist/ is back to https://imapsync.lamiral.info/dist/ So feel free. Feel free and get free imapsync at https://imapsync.lamiral.info/dist/ or at https://github.com/imapsync/imapsync Debian folks will prefer github because of the systematic patch the github maintainer applies, fixing the CVE https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2013-4279 See http://lamiral.info/~gilles/imapsync/#NUMBERS for details about that issue. > It seems that the license [6] has no restrictions > For the current license, this could make it a candidate for > incorporation in the Debian repositories again? Yes! Now some of my worries. Quoting https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/10/msg00482.html "I am not going to even bother trying to understand if we can actually distribute imapsync in Debian main given its very unusual license". and https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/10/msg00483.html "Yes, I agree that it is a somewhat strange license." I thought that the complete license text, all contained in the simple sentence "No limits to do anything with this work and this license", was self-explanatory as one of the most free work license I ever encountered in the universe. I failed. I see that I should write a FAQ about that sentence, explaining what "no limits" means as well as "anything", maybe also "work" and "license", a king of classic dictionary indeed. I took my time to write that license, choosing words that could be understood by any basic English speaker but I clearly missed this aim. Now, seeing evidence that "No limits to do anything with this work and this license" is not well understood, I really wonder, what any other license longer than a single simple sentence might mean and trigger in any normal brain? Thanks for reading. [3] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=609845#60 [4] https://imapsync.lamiral.info [5] https://imapsync.lamiral.info/INSTALL.d/INSTALL.Debian.txt [6] https://imapsync.lamiral.info/NOLIMIT [7] https://github.com/imapsync/imapsync -- Au revoir, Gilles Lamiral. France, Baulon (35580) mob +33 6 19 22 03 54 tel +33 9 51 84 42 42
