https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker en a blog about Debian and self-hosting Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:45:00 +0000 PluXml https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1357505158-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1357505158-1 @gnuzer : A licensing statement is acceptable if it is clear. For some reason, when I thought about packaging OpenTracker, I thought the plain sentence “ this is beerware” was not clear enough, so I asked the author to clarify it, by adding a link to a page where that license is written. His reply was a clear refusal so I just gave up. Now that I have found another way to do what I wanted to do, which is distributing files with BitTorrent, I no longer have any reason to package OpenTracker. If you think it is acceptable for Debian (in other words, if you think the FTP masters will accept it) and if you have time to package it, please go ahead. I will not. Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:45:00 +0000 Tanguy https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1357494259-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1357494259-1 Sorry to dig this up, but this discussion is ridiculous. Beerware *is* a clear enough license and is a free software license for sure. Fedora considers Beerware free ans GPL-compatible : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Beerware I don't know if debian includes beerware-licensed software, but they already include software under similar licenses such as WTFPL. Legitimity of copyright relies on the wish of the author, on the contract established between the author and the rest of the world. And the author has given his word : you can do anything you want, period. If the word of the author doesn't count, then why should we respect copyright ? Some people might think that a statement without proper formatting and ugly dislaimers written in caps has no moral value. But what I read in the comments of erdgeist (and in the words of Poul-Henning Kamp which are behind the spirit of Beerware) is much more a proof of good faith to me than any juridical bullshit. PS: I upvote the idea of packaging opentracker for debian repos. Sun, 06 Jan 2013 17:44:00 +0000 gnuzer https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1355820900-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1355820900-1 @Ben : Well, currently I have no specific interest in packaging OpenTracker anymore. Because of that licensing bug, and as my discussion with the author was not successful in clarifying that point, I looked for other solutions and decided to look at the DHT that allows for trackerless torrents. So far, I am satisfied with that. Now, I do not share your optimism, because in my private discussion with the author, it appeared he was willing to allow anyone to redistribute OT but not to relicense it, whatever that could mean. Also, he did not want to simply clarify this by making the license explicit in the source package itself, which could have been done by either copying the entire text of the license (three lines only!) or giving a link to it. In fact he appeared to be quite annoyed by the discussion so I was not able to continue it much further. So basically, I agree that this program is intended to be free, but that was never properly explicited, so to me this “license bug” is still there, preventing OT to enter Debian or Ubuntu. Of course, if it is packaged, the decision of including it into Debian will ultimately be the FTP masters'. Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:55:00 +0000 Tanguy https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1355804312-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1355804312-1 I, too, am interested in seeing opentracker added to Debian (and Ubuntu). We use opentracker at http://indietorrent.org and it has served us very well. It would be nice to see opentracker's development continue and for the software to be documented thoroughly. The prospect of packaging opentracker for distribution in Debian is already being discussed at: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=685575 . (I have brought this post to the package maintainers' attention.) Its inclusion in Ubuntu is also being discussed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/518711 . Thanks for taking the time to put the "official word" into the record, erdgeist! Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:18:00 +0000 Ben https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1347549280-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1347549280-1 @erdgeist : Well, I clearly remember contacting you about that. Your answer was something like: “I am not interested in licensing issues and I do not want to spend time on that; I chose beerware to avoid such questions and I will not change the license, take it as it is or leave it.” At that time, I was looking for a clean way to distribute files, and given the rotten state of the traditional simple tracker (the original BitTorrent one and its fork BitTornado), I was considering OpenTracker for that goal so I was ready to package it for my convenience, and hopefully for other users or potential users too. Your refusal of clarifying the license issue made me abandon that idea. Since that time, I realized that a tracker was no longer necessary to distribute files on BitTorrent, thanks to the DHT system. For that reason I coded myself a modern torrent generator, which I am using with the DHT now. If you think having OpenTracker in Debian could be beneficial for users, I can still package it though, provided that you license it under a free license, preferably a well-known one. Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:14:00 +0000 Tanguy https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1347545566-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1347545566-1 Sorry for the late reply to that thread. No one here ever really contacted me about the licence issues, so I never had the chance to get stuff straight. If anyone ever would have asked, I would have provided a special permission to re-distribute opentracker under every brain-fart-licencing scheme is the flavour of the year now. Hand written, if necessary. I'm astonished what the community nowaday demands from programmers to graciously accept the software given away for free. Take it or leave it. Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:12:00 +0000 erdgeist https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1307957946-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1307957946-1 @Jeff Schroeder: Excellent, I shall test that. If it can seamlessly replace tracking, then it is probably the best solution indeed, so the only thing I would then have to code is a metainfo (aka torrent) file generator, which is rather easy. Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:39:00 +0000 Tanguy https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1307712810-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article11/coding-bittorrent-tracker/#c1307712810-1 What about DHT? Major bittorrent sites like the pirate bay long ago moved away from the centralized bittorrent "tracker" model to the Distributed Hash Table model. Very brief overview: http://wiki.bitcomet.com/using_dht_tracker Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:33:00 +0000 Jeff Schroeder