swf files in Ubuntu

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:01 AM, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hello Charlie,
>
> Charlie Smotherman [2011-01-04  2:26 -0600]:
>> I am curious as to whats Ubuntu's policy on having *.swf files in the archive?
>
> We (as in the archive admins) mostly stick to the Debian position and
> DFSG, with some exceptions like we consider GFDL as "free".
>
> From a legal POV it's primarily a license question. Many "strict free"
> licenses like the GPL mandate that you distribute the "preferred form
> of modification" (aka. "source") for all files, which *.swf is not.
> For the same reason we reject GPL packages which ship PDFs without a
> source (like ODF or LaTeX).
>
> So if a package wants to ship an swf, it needs a "weaker" license like
> BSD or MIT. If it's GPL, it's not distributable at all.
>
> However, I expect that we still would put a package with just an swf
> into multiverse, as it still violates the "source available" clause of
> the DFSG.

I agree with everything Martin says above.

For what it's worth, I packaged jPlayer recently for Natty, which uses
mtasc to compile an swf file from source.  If you're looking for a
simple packaging example of how to build swf in a debian package,
'apt-get source jplayer'.

Dustin