nautilus-dropbox question

[David Cantrell]

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I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I'd like to package
nautilus-dropbox for inclusion in Fedora.  There are a few concerns I have and
if this program is something destined for the ForbiddenItems list, I'd like to
know that before I go and package it.

First off, what is nautilus-dropbox?  If you head to www.getdropbox.com,
you'll find information about the Dropbox service from Evenflow, Inc.  There's
a neat video you can watch on the site.  In short, it's a shared folder that
you can use across multiple computers.  Makes it easy to sync up projects and
files.

nautilus-dropbox is a GPL'ed component they wrote for GNOME desktops.  This is
the part you download from them and install.  The provide packages for Ubuntu
and even a Ubuntu deb repository, but nothing for Fedora beyond Fedora 10.
I'd like to skip to just including nautilus-dropbox in our repos if possible.
Questions and concerns:

1) nautilus-dropbox is licensed under the GPL, but the image files they
include in the package are not.  Specifically, it says:

     All images included in this package constitute data and are not licensed
     for you to use under the terms of the GPL. You may not use the images
     included in this package for any reason other than redistributing
     this package without first obtaining permission from Evenflow, Inc.
     You are explicitly forbidden from using these images in any other
     software package. This includes the files:

     data/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/dropbox.png
     data/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/dropbox.png
     data/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/dropbox.png
     data/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/dropbox.png
     data/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/dropbox.png
     data/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/dropbox.png
     data/icons/hicolor/64x64/emblems/emblem-dropbox-syncing.png
     data/icons/hicolor/64x64/emblems/emblem-dropbox-uptodate.png
     data/icons/hicolor/64x64/emblems/emblem-dropbox-unsyncable.png

While it appears we can redistribute them with nautilus-dropbox, users would
not be allowed to use these images for other things.  Is replacing them
sufficient for Fedora packaging?  What about the pristine source?  Can they be
left in the source archive or does that have to be scrubbed?

2) nautilus-dropbox itself is a small piece of the larger dropbox client
system.  When you install it, it will determine if you have ~/.dropbox-dist on
your system.  If you don't, it will run the dropbox setup "thing", which
downloads dropbox-dist from Evenflow for your system and places it in
~/.dropbox-dist.  The contents of ~/.dropbox-dist are precompiled variants of
all of the libraries and programs they need to run.  Dropbox appears to ignore
the system versions and just has you use whatever they include.

This isn't really part of nautilus-dropbox, it's just installed by the setup
program on the first run.  The concern here is do we care about programs that
download large wads of precompiled software and stuff it in dot directories?

Thanks,

(When replying, please include me directly because I'm not on
fedora-legal-list.)

- -- 
David Cantrell <dcantrell(a)redhat.com&gt;
Red Hat / Honolulu, HI

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[Tom Callaway]

On 07/28/2009 05:24 PM, David Cantrell wrote:

>  While it appears we can redistribute them with nautilus-dropbox,
> users would
>  not be allowed to use these images for other things.  Is replacing them
>  sufficient for Fedora packaging?  What about the pristine source?  Can they be
>  left in the source archive or does that have to be scrubbed? 
Replacing them should be sufficient, as long as they are also deleted in
%prep. You don't need to repackage the source archive, since we
technically have permission to redistribute them, albeit under extremely
narrow and unfriendly terms.

>  2) nautilus-dropbox itself is a small piece of the larger dropbox
> client
>  system.  When you install it, it will determine if you have ~/.dropbox-dist on
>  your system.  If you don't, it will run the dropbox setup "thing", which
>  downloads dropbox-dist from Evenflow for your system and places it in
>  ~/.dropbox-dist.  The contents of ~/.dropbox-dist are precompiled variants of
>  all of the libraries and programs they need to run.  Dropbox appears to ignore
>  the system versions and just has you use whatever they include. 
This is the very definition of code fail. I think you're going to need
to patch this out, so it uses system libs.

>  This isn't really part of nautilus-dropbox, it's just
> installed by the setup
>  program on the first run.  The concern here is do we care about programs that
>  download large wads of precompiled software and stuff it in dot directories? 
Yeah, we care.

~spot