Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de> writes:

[CC to python-dev]

The windist.exe version shipped with current python releasese is outdated and does not have any license information about windist included.

Alexandre Fayolle writes:

...

Package: python2.3-dev Version: 2.3.3-7 Severity: normal

Hi,

I noticed the file /usr/lib/python2.3/distutils/command/wininst.exe is missing from my currently installed version of the python2.3-dev package. I'm pretty sure I used to be able to create windows installers for the modules I develop from my Debian machine.

Is this removal caused by an omission, or is there some licensing issue ? I could not find anything on that topic in the changelog, but maybe I didn't look hard enough.

I cannot find anything about the licensing. The executable only shows

$Info: This file is packed with the UPX executable packer http://upx.tsx.org $ $Id: UPX 1.01 Copyright (C) 1996-2000 the UPX Team. All Rights Reserved. $

However I found http://upx.sourceforge.net/.

- Maybe the binary can be updated to the SF version? - Add the upx license to the Lib/distutils/command directory?

[Debian only:

The UPX license itself is discussed at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/01/msg00025.html

upx-nrv is currently in section non-free/utils, so it's better not to distribute it in the Debian package. ]

Does this/should this affect the official 2.3.4 release, or is this only for debian packaging? upx is licensed GPL, with this exception which applies (imo) to the wininst.exe binary: <quote> SPECIAL EXCEPTION FOR COMPRESSED EXECUTABLES ============================================ The stub which is imbedded in each UPX compressed program is part of UPX and UCL, and contains code that is under our copyright. The terms of the GNU General Public License still apply as compressing a program is a special form of linking with our stub. Hereby Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer and Laszlo Molnar grant you special permission to freely use and distribute all UPX compressed programs (including commercial ones), subject to the following restrictions: 1. You must compress your program with a completely unmodified UPX version; either with our precompiled version, or (at your option) with a self compiled version of the unmodified UPX sources as distributed by us. 2. This also implies that the UPX stub must be completely unmodfied, i.e. the stub imbedded in your compressed program must be byte-identical to the stub that is produced by the official unmodified UPX version. 3. The decompressor and any other code from the stub must exclusively get used by the unmodified UPX stub for decompressing your program at program startup. No portion of the stub may get read, copied, called or otherwise get used or accessed by your program. </quote> Especially 3. puts restrictions on the binary. The full upx license is here: <http://upx.sourceforge.net/upx-license.html> Hm, maybe it would be better to *not* compress wininst.exe by upx any longer. The uncompressed exe is 57344 bytes, the compressed on 21504 bytes. Any bdist_wininst installer would be 36 kB larger, which isn't a large deal. Thomas