p7zip-plugins and rar extraction.

[Kevin Martin]

On 04/16/13 15:47, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Kevin Martin <ktmdms at gmail.com> said:
>> What is the reason that rar archive extraction support is not included in the 7z.so in the p7zip-plugins rpm?
> 
> In the p7zip SRPM SPEC file:
> 
>    # RAR sources removed since their license is incompatible with the LGPL
> 
> In a package review attempt for "unrar":
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=319831#c25
> ************************************************************************
> I spoke via email to Eugene Roshal about this issue. He was unaware that clamav
> had used derived code from their implementation in clamav, under the GPL
> license, and stated that he did not grant them permission to do so.
> 
> He said that the only way he was willing for such code to be used was with a
> clause like the following:
> 
> "The unRAR sources cannot be used to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, 
>  which is proprietary. Distribution of modified unRAR sources in separate form 
>  or as a part of other software is permitted, provided that it is clearly
>  stated in the documentation and source comments that the code may
>  not be used to develop a RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver."
> 
> Unfortunately, such a restriction conflicts directly with the GPL, and is a
> showstopper.
> 
> This code cannot go into Fedora as is. All RAR v3.x support would need to be
> stripped out, before it could be considered. Given that most RAR files are RAR
> v3, that severely limits the usefulness of this application.
> ************************************************************************
> 
> Basically, the only documentation of the file format is in the unrar
> source code, and it is under a non-free license.  I don't think anyone
> has tried to reverse engineer it to make a clean-room implementation.
> 

Thanks for the info.  It seems strange that because the folks at RAR don't want 7zip to be able to *create* RAR archives that
Redhat/Fedora has to remove even the ability to extract RAR archives with 7z.  Not being a programmer I guess I don't get how hard
it would be to hobble allowing creation while still allowing extraction.

Kevin