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@lists.fedorapro... [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... SPEC: http://copr-dist-git.fedorainfracloud.org/cgit/dmoerner/higan/higan.git/tree... [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Games/Packaging [5] https://paste.fedoraproject.org/526144/
On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 8:33 AM, Daniel Moerner dmoerner@gmail.com wrote:
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!
Welcome! I too am an antique software enthusiast; I maintain several games and tools that have very limited appeal but I need from time to time. :) There's nothing so sublime as 20 year old C that builds unmodified on gcc 6.x.
Best, Daniel
[1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel- announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/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=6dcef5efc36498c77b370f17cc4ffe 3f9214ce79 [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Games/Packaging [5] https://paste.fedoraproject.org/526144/
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Hi!
On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 3:33 PM, Daniel Moerner dmoerner@gmail.com wrote:
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!
Higan was submitted for review to RPM Fusion a long time ago: https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2682
At some point I even tried to review it but it seems the original packager lost interest.
Maybe you can have a look anyway.
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.
This is something I already noted during my quick review in RPM Fusion. You should contact upstream and encourage them to include the text of the license.
More info here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:LicensingGuidelines#License_Text
Bye,
Andrea
On 01/12/2017 09:51 AM, Andrea Musuruane wrote:
Hi!
On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 3:33 PM, Daniel Moerner <dmoerner@gmail.com mailto:dmoerner@gmail.com> wrote:
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!Higan was submitted for review to RPM Fusion a long time ago: https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2682
At some point I even tried to review it but it seems the original packager lost interest.
Maybe you can have a look anyway.
Thank you, I didn't see the rpm fusion submission. I will look through the comments there, it definitely looks like I can improve my %build section.
I am trying to get in touch with upstream about the license file.
Daniel
Hi everyone,
This is just a ping that I submitted my first package for review and need reviews and hopefully a sponsor: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1414087
I decided to submit Gearboy, a Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator, rather than higan as I originally said in my earlier email to this list. The license situation with higan is more complicated than I thought, and I longer believe it satisfies Fedora's new emulator policy.
Gearboy has a very responsive upstream, and is a simpler package. I thought it would be a more appropriate first package.
Sorry for spamming the list when I accidentally added the bug as Depending on rather than Blocking FE-GAMESIG!
Thanks for any review I might get!
Best, Daniel
Just out of curiosity, what's the license issue with higan?
Also if you're looking for a gameboy/color/advance emulator, I already have visualboyadvance-m in Fedora's repos.
Also also, I'm not sure if you missed this, but it's possible to remove the roms for Fedora: https://github.com/drhelius/Gearboy/issues/43
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Andrea Musuruane -
Daniel Moerner -
Jeremy Newton -
Jon Ciesla