Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[GOTO Masanori]

At Wed, 28 Aug 2002 07:06:58 +0900 (JST),
Tatsuya Kinoshita wrote:
> On August 27, 2002 at 2:28AM -0700,
> Osamu Aoki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >  LHa   0.01-1.00:   Masaru Oki (LHa original author, 1991-1992)
> >  Suse.com list e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> He is one of the NetBSD developers.  His e-mail address is
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.

Osamu, Tatsuya,
Thanks, it's good summary.
Copyright file is complemented with your suggestions!

-- gotom

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Tatsuya Kinoshita]

On August 27, 2002 at 2:28AM -0700,
Osamu Aoki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>  LHa   0.01-1.00:   Masaru Oki (LHa original author, 1991-1992)
>  Suse.com list e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

He is one of the NetBSD developers.  His e-mail address is
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.

>  LHa   1.10-1.14:   Nobutaka Watazaki (Last official release? 1993-1995)
>  No e-mail available (Any idea?)

I found his e-mail addresses as follows:

lha-1.14i/header.doc.euc

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.ss.cs.meiji.ac.jp/Services/software_Sun4/lha114.html

  NIFTY-Serve JBD02514
  E-Mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  (1995-01-14)

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA004111/file/rcpsd057.htm

  96/11/18
  ALICE-NET   ALS00595Nasty
  E-Mail  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  E-Mail  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/~poffice/news/fj.os.bsd.freebsd/3527

  From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nobutaka Watazaki)
  Date: 2 Oct 1997 01:18:19 GMT

-- 
Tatsuya Kinoshita

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Osamu Aoki]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 12:50:58PM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
> At Mon, 26 Aug 2002 00:23:30 -0700, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> > It looks like Arai-san [EMAIL PROTECTED] seems to be most active.
> > http://ns103.net/~arai is his URL
> > 
> > He has new autoconf version. 
> > 
> > It looks to me people are treating almost like public domain as long as
> > New sources are available to general public.

Here I meant "most Japanese non-commercial entity" by "people".  Debian
can not treat it as PD with current license for sure.

> It's worth considering to include/replace with his patch.
> It includes some more features. My little concern is he does not
> state any copyright issues clearly. I try to contact to him.

My understanding is what ever Arai-san did is copyright of him.  Let's
try to let him license his portion with BSD without AD clause (i.e.
MIT-X) license.  

Problem is original software writers who wrote core parts have to agree
to a new DSFG compliant license.  Otherwise this will not go into MAIN.
I think most of them will agree either GPL or X for their part of
contribution if we contact them properly.  Here is my research result
for the original copyright holders.

Upstream authors, maintainers:
 LHarc 0.01-1.00:   Yooichi Tagawa (LHa code taken from here, 1988-1989)
 Nikkei-mix ID: y.tagawa (Now this is defunct BBS, Licensing term
 in manual page come from his licence for lharc)
 His new web page seems to be www2s.biglibe.ne.jp/~yex/
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] is the contact e-mail address for another
 software.  Page updated at least July/2001
 
 LHa   0.01-1.00:   Masaru Oki (LHa original author, 1991-1992)
 Suse.com list e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 LHa   1.10-1.14:   Nobutaka Watazaki (Last official release? 1993-1995)
 No e-mail available (Any idea?)
 
 Lha   1.14a-1.14e: Tsugio Okamoto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (1996-2000)

 LHa   1.15 Recent one on NET

 LHA autoconf version:  Arai-san<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(2002)

All these people has some claim on copyright statement on source files.
lharc.c provides a good summary.  (Please use that for README.Debian)

Problem is there is no e-mail available for the first 3 primary authors.
They are asking to be contacted by e-mail but there is no mention.

Anyway, getting license corrected for old softwares is very difficult.




Note: By the way, patch with name mentioned are: 
 0.01-1.00
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (rename.c -> utils.c)
  Takayuki Honma (time related stuff, lhadd.c)
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] of Tokyo (EUC)
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Minix patch)
These people's names except ishikawa do not exist in current source,
also lhadd.c which seems to be affected are marked as "source all
changed" by Watazaki. I would call them trivial contribution and do not
thin critical for copyright issue. Also in Makefile, there is mention on
# for OSK
# V1.08 1990.10.09  Sakura Tomozou
# V2.00 + lzhuf4/5  1990.10.26
but this is porting only and should not concern Debian.

-- 
~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +
Osamu Aoki @ Cupertino CA USA, GPG-key: A8061F32
 .''`.  Debian Reference: post-installation user's guide for non-developers
 : :' : http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ also http://qref.sf.net
 `. `'  "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software" --- Social Contract

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Brian May]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 02:53:27PM +0300, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> > Ideally, amavis needs access for all archive formats so it can check
> > for viruses in E-Mail...
> 
> You mean it must be able to UNpack those packed files attached to E-Mail?

Yes.

> > > P.S: I don't subscribe to mailing-lists of Debian, so please Cc: your
> > > replies to me. And I am not Debian developer.
> > 
> > Please set your Mail-Followup-To: header correctly in future, that
> > way mutt will automatically do the right thing.
> 
> Thanks. I did not know about that. I already know, how to use
> Followup-To: -header in Usenet News.

Did you really mean to say:

Mail-Followup-To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

If you want CCs, you need to be mentioned there, too.
-- 
Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[GOTO Masanori]

At Mon, 26 Aug 2002 00:23:30 -0700,
Osamu Aoki wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 09:33:40AM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
> > At Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:01:15 +0300,
> > Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> > >It's free to distribute on the network, but if you distribute for
> > >the people who cannot access the network (by magazine or CD-ROM),
> > >please send E-Mail (Inter-Net address) to the author before the
> > >distribution. That's well where this software is appeared.
> > >If you cannot do, you must send me the E-Mail later.
> > > 
> > >  Original Source Code License Statement:
> > > 
> > >/*Copyright (C) MCMLXXXIX Yooichi.Tagawa  */
> > >/*ModifiedNobutaka Watazaki   */
> > >/*   Thanks to H.Yoshizaki. (MS-DOS LHarc)*/
> > > 
> > >  Clip here 
> 
> Masanori, I do not know where you got this but this is memo by Tsugio.
> 
> Manual page seems to me the thorough license from the original authors.
> Please consider the following for copyright section.  Many restrictions
> for commercial use of modified code.

Thank you for your indication and translation!
I've added the below statement.

> Boy, this license did not make much sense even in Japanese.  It get
> worse with my English. (Maybe this was so bad Masanori may have skipped
> translating this one.)
>
> Here "commercial" may be interpreted as "for-fee".  "Added value" seems
> to mean "feature enhancement".

Your translation is great. Original statement has only weak argument...
The insufficiency of this license statement is similar to early
Japanese "freeware" licenses. I agree with your terms. Thanks.

> > > I think, only way to get free unpacking software for LHA-files is to
> > > negotiate with those Japanese persons. Here are some URL of Japanese
> > > LHA-software:
> > > 
> > > http://shibuya.cool.ne.jp/lha/
> > 
> > I think it can be replaceable with below Tsugio's source.
> > 
> > > http://www2m.biglobe.ne.jp/~dolphin/lha/lha.htm
> > 
> > Debian package uses his (Tsugio's) source. It also can handle -lh7-
> > format.  I already contacted with him, but his response were too slow
> > (waited over 4 months, or more!), and he thought changing license was
> > very difficult. LHa for unix was hacked by many people at least over
> > 13 years, they have treated their license as "vague". Historical
> > reason makes difficult to change their license.
> 
> It looks like Arai-san [EMAIL PROTECTED] seems to be most active.
> http://ns103.net/~arai is his URL
> 
> He has new autoconf version. 
> 
> It looks to me people are treating almost like public domain as long as
> New sources are available to general public.

It's worth considering to include/replace with his patch.
It includes some more features. My little concern is he does not
state any copyright issues clearly. I try to contact to him.

Regards,
-- gotom

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Juhapekka Tolvanen]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, +05:00:59 EEST (UTC +0300),
Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pressed some keys:

> On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 04:01:15PM +0300, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> > It is not very bad thing if we can't create archives in formats like
> > ACE, ARJ, LHA or RAR with free software. But it is more important to

> Ideally, amavis needs access for all archive formats so it can check
> for viruses in E-Mail...

You mean it must be able to UNpack those packed files attached to E-Mail?

> > P.S: I don't subscribe to mailing-lists of Debian, so please Cc: your
> > replies to me. And I am not Debian developer.
> 
> Please set your Mail-Followup-To: header correctly in future, that
> way mutt will automatically do the right thing.

Thanks. I did not know about that. I already know, how to use
Followup-To: -header in Usenet News.


-- 
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * * University of Jyväskylä * * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~juhtolv/index.html * * * * "STRAIGHT BUT NOT NARROW!!"
"Vesi hakkaa minua maahan, kuin tuhat lekaa ja miljoona vasaraa. Niinkuin
lauletaan, niin happi räjähtää ja kauniista kaunein kädet ojentaa." Apulanta

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Juhapekka Tolvanen]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, +21:51:59 EEST (UTC +0300),
Juhapekka Tolvanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pressed some keys:

> On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, +16:01:15 EEST (UTC +0300),
> Juhapekka Tolvanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pressed some keys:

> Docs about format of LHA or LZH is here:
> 
> http://www.osirusoft.com/joejared/lzhformat.html

As you can see, that Joe Jared is creating some LHA-software.

http://www.osirusoft.com/joejared/

http://www.osirusoft.com/joejared/lh7online.html

But their licences are not very DFSG-compliant. Who could pressure him
gently to change licence?


-- 
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * * University of Jyväskylä * * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~juhtolv/index.html * * * * "STRAIGHT BUT NOT NARROW!!"
"Vesi hakkaa minua maahan, kuin tuhat lekaa ja miljoona vasaraa. Niinkuin
lauletaan, niin happi räjähtää ja kauniista kaunein kädet ojentaa." Apulanta

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 09:33:40AM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
> At Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:01:15 +0300,
> Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> >It's free to distribute on the network, but if you distribute for
> >the people who cannot access the network (by magazine or CD-ROM),
> >please send E-Mail (Inter-Net address) to the author before the
> >distribution. That's well where this software is appeared.
> >If you cannot do, you must send me the E-Mail later.
> > 
> >  Original Source Code License Statement:
> > 
> >/*Copyright (C) MCMLXXXIX Yooichi.Tagawa  */
> >/*ModifiedNobutaka Watazaki   */
> >/*   Thanks to H.Yoshizaki. (MS-DOS LHarc)*/
> > 
> >  Clip here 

Masanori, I do not know where you got this but this is memo by Tsugio.

Manual page seems to me the thorough license from the original authors.
Please consider the following for copyright section.  Many restrictions
for commercial use of modified code.


Permission is given for redistribution, copy, and modification provided
following conditions are met.

1. Do not remove copyright clause.
2. Distribution shall conform:
 a. The content of redistribution (i.e., source code, documentation,
and reference guide for programmers) shall include original contents.
If contents are modified, the document clearly indicating
the fact of modification must be included.
 b. If LHa is redistributed with added values, you must put your best
effort to include them (Translator comment: If read literally,
original Japanese was unclear what "them" means here.  But
undoubtedly this "them" means source code for the added value
portion and this is a typical Japanese sloppy writing style to
abbreviate as such)  Also the document clearly indicating that
added value was added must be included. 
 c. Binary only distribution is not allowed (including added value
ones.)
3. You need to put effort to distribute the latest version (This is not
   your duty).

   NB: Distribution on Internet is free.  Please notify me by e-mail or
   other means prior to the distribution if distribution is done through
   non-Internet media (Magazine, CDROM etc.)  If not, make sure to Email
   me later.

4. Any damage caused by the existence and use of this program will not
   be compensated.

5. Author will not be responsible to correct errors even if program is
   defective.

6. This program, either as a part of this or as a whole of this, may be
   included into other programs.  In this case, that program is not LHa
   and can not call itself LHa.

7. For commercial use, in addition to above conditions, following
   condition needs to be met.

   a.  The program whose content is mainly this program can not be used
   commercially.
   b.  If the recipient of commercial use deems inappropriate as a
   program user, you must not distribute.
   c.  If used as a method for the installation, you must not force
   others to use this program.  In this case, commercial user will
   perform its work while taking full responsibility of its outcome
   d.  If added value is done under the commercial use by using this
   program, commercial user shall provide its support.

Boy, this license did not make much sense even in Japanese.  It get
worse with my English. (Maybe this was so bad Masanori may have skipped
translating this one.)

Here "commercial" may be interpreted as "for-fee".  "Added value" seems
to mean "feature enhancement".
> > 
> > I think, only way to get free unpacking software for LHA-files is to
> > negotiate with those Japanese persons. Here are some URL of Japanese
> > LHA-software:
> > 
> > http://shibuya.cool.ne.jp/lha/
> 
> I think it can be replaceable with below Tsugio's source.
> 
> > http://www2m.biglobe.ne.jp/~dolphin/lha/lha.htm
> 
> Debian package uses his (Tsugio's) source. It also can handle -lh7-
> format.  I already contacted with him, but his response were too slow
> (waited over 4 months, or more!), and he thought changing license was
> very difficult. LHa for unix was hacked by many people at least over
> 13 years, they have treated their license as "vague". Historical
> reason makes difficult to change their license.

It looks like Arai-san [EMAIL PROTECTED] seems to be most active.
http://ns103.net/~arai is his URL

He has new autoconf version. 

It looks to me people are treating almost like public domain as long as
New sources are available to general public.

Anyway, there is good amount of file format conventions written in
Tsugio's page.


-- 
~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +
Osamu Aoki @ Cupertino CA USA, GPG-key: A8061F32
 .''`.  Debian Reference: post-installation user's guide for non-developers
 : :' : http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ also http://qref.sf.net
 `. `'  "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software" --- Soci

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[GOTO Masanori]

At Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:01:15 +0300,
Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
>It's free to distribute on the network, but if you distribute for
>the people who cannot access the network (by magazine or CD-ROM),
>please send E-Mail (Inter-Net address) to the author before the
>distribution. That's well where this software is appeard.
>If you cannot do, you must send me the E-Mail later.
> 
>  Original Source Code License Statement:
> 
>/*Copyright (C) MCMLXXXIX Yooichi.Tagawa  */
>/*ModifiedNobutaka Watazaki   */
>/*   Thanks to H.Yoshizaki. (MS-DOS LHarc)*/
> 
>  Clip here 
> 
> I think, only way to get free unpacking software for LHA-files is to
> negotiate with those Japanese persons. Here are some URL of Japanese
> LHA-software:
> 
> http://shibuya.cool.ne.jp/lha/

I think it can be replacable with below Tsugio's source.

> http://www2m.biglobe.ne.jp/~dolphin/lha/lha.htm

Debian package uses his (Tsugio's) source. It also can handle -lh7-
format.  I already contacted with him, but his responce were too slow
(waited over 4 months, or more!), and he thought changing license was
very difficult. LHa for unix was hacked by many people at least over
13 years, they have treated thier license as "vague". Historical
reason makes diffcult to change their license.

> How about contacting authors of AmigaOS-versions of LHA?
> 
> http://lha.warped.com/index.html
> 
> Maybe they could release those sources under some free licence and then
> somebody could port them to Unix?

It seems good idea, but we have to make them push thier source as
public, and then port into unix... I don't know porting from amiga
into unix is easy issue or not.

At Fri, 23 Aug 2002 21:51:59 +0300,
Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, +16:01:15 EEST (UTC +0300),
> Juhapekka Tolvanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pressed some keys:
> 
> Wow! wotsit.org have some docs about archive file formats, too:
> 
> http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=archive
> 
> http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?page=2&s=archive
> 
> Docs about format of LHA or LZH is here:
> 
> http://www.osirusoft.com/joejared/lzhformat.html
> 
> It has also some links to LHA-related WWW-pages.

We can get lha archive format information easily.

> I just got an idea: What if some old version of LHA has free enough
> licence, so somebody could could create better free LHA-software out of
> it? I mean that maybe somebody could do OpenSSH-like things with LHA.

I don't know there was DFSG-Free version in past.
Does anyone try to make free lha archiver?

-- gotom

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Richard Braakman]

On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 02:35:31AM +, Frank Copeland wrote:
> It remains to be seen how easy it is to port code written for a defunct
> proprietary (but supposedly ANSI-compliant) compiler on a vaguely
> unix-like but non-POSIX OS.

I would be happy to help with that, for what it's worth.  I don't
have experience with the platform in question, but I have experience
with ugly code.  The experience should be similar :-)

Richard Braakman

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Eduard Bloch]

#include 
* Peter De Wachter [Sat, Aug 24 2002, 01:25:54AM]:

> It has the following license:
> -- UNACE-SOURCE v1.2b (extract-util) --
> the source may be distributed and used, 
> but I,Marcel Lemke, retain ownership of
> the copyrights to the source.
> ---
> 
> I think this makes it non-free (it doesn't explicitly allow
> modifications), but it may help to figure out the algorithm.

Worse. I considered packaging it (*) but stopped after discussing the
license issue. You are only allowed to use the source, nothing is said
about the binary created. Looks like the qmail-src story.

(*) while extending the support in the unp 

Gruss/Regards,
Eduard.
-- 
Linux - aus klaren Quellen wird ein starker Strom.

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Frank Copeland]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 14:06:50 + (UTC), Juhapekka Tolvanen <[EMAIL 
PROTECTED]> wrote:

> How about contacting authors of AmigaOS-versions of LHA?
> 
> http://lha.warped.com/index.html

I was going to point out that the (de)compression routines had been
written in M68K assembly, but according to
 that's no longer the case.

> Maybe they could release those sources under some free licence and then
> somebody could port them to Unix?

May be worth a try. The current maintainer has suggested the
possibility of releasing the source, and since development seems to
have stalled (no new release in 3 years) he may be more open to the
suggestion.

It remains to be seen how easy it is to port code written for a defunct
proprietary (but supposedly ANSI-compliant) compiler on a vaguely
unix-like but non-POSIX OS.

Frank
-- 
Home Page: http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fjc/> 
Not the Scientology Home Page: http://xenu.apana.org.au/ntshp/>

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Brian May]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 04:01:15PM +0300, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> It is not very bad thing if we can't create archives in formats like
> ACE, ARJ, LHA or RAR with free software. But it is more important to

Ideally, amavis needs access for all archive formats so it can check
for viruses in E-Mail...

> ARC:
> 
> This is very old archive-format. We only need some way to unpack those
> files. Fortunately, this was just announced at c.o.l.a:
> 
> http://rus.members.beeb.net/nomarch.html
>
> It is meant to be free replacement for arc. It is under GNU GPL. It can
> also unpack Spark-files (common under Acorn Archimedes).

This is already in Debian.

> P.S: I don't subscribe to mailing-lists of Debian, so please Cc: your
> replies to me. And I am not Debian developer.

Please set your Mail-Followup-To: header correctly in future, that
way mutt will automatically do the right thing.

I think this is off-topic for debian-legal, but I am not sure.
-- 
Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Peter De Wachter]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 04:01:15PM +0300, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> ACE:
> 
> http://www.winace.com/
> 
> They provide some statically linked Linux-binary for unpacking
> ACE-archives. If that file-format is not very secret, somebody might be
> able to create free unpacking-software for ACE-files. But feel free to
> negotiate with authors of WinAce.

Old versions of ACE came with the source for a simple unpacker. I
believe the only things lacking are support for encrypted and multi-file
archives. It works fine on Linux.

It has the following license:
-- UNACE-SOURCE v1.2b (extract-util) --
the source may be distributed and used, 
but I,Marcel Lemke, retain ownership of
the copyrights to the source.
---

I think this makes it non-free (it doesn't explicitly allow
modifications), but it may help to figure out the algorithm.

You can find it at http://wilma.vub.ac.be/~pdewacht/unace-1.2b.tar.gz

Mvg,
Peter De Wachter

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Adam Heath]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:

> [snip]

I've been working on an interface to several archive formats.  Currently, I
have .ar, .cpio(binary and compat) and .tar(sysv, gnu, posix).  I've used it
to make a .deb with pure java code, and then install it with dpkg.

I'm currently adding .cab support.

The present implementation is in java, but I plan on porting to perl/python/c
when I get the right amount of features done.

I don't consider a format implemented, until I have both reading and writing
done, AND test cases for it.

The name of this project is Altar(Abstract Library To ARchives).  It's not yet
released.

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Drew Scott Daniels]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:

>
> When I run command "vrms" in my Debian GNU/Linux, most of those non-free
> packages it finds are packers and/or unpackers. How about you? I like to
>
There may be patent issues. I'd check with the authors of the archivers.
Additionally reading the compression newsgroup FAQ may provide some
information regarding archivers and patents. Mark Nelson also recently
commented that Unisys's patent on LWZ will be expiring soon. I'd check
into that if it's applicable to any archiver you're looking at.

A good list of archivers for DOS/Windows and Macs can be found through
http://www.compression.ca and http://www.datacompression.info

>
> It is not very bad thing if we can't create archives in formats like
> ACE, ARJ, LHA or RAR with free software. But it is more important to
> have free software for unpacking of those archives. If we want to create
> new archives, we can always use free software like GNU tar, gzip and
> Bzip2 and tell other people to use some free or non-free software to
> unpack them. .tar-, .tar.gz-, .gz- and even .bz2- and .tar.bz2-files are
> well understood by many general-purpose archivers, like Winzip,
> PowerArchiver, UltimateZip and Stuffit. And GNU Tar, gzip and Bzip2
> themselves have been ported to many Operating systems already (Unixes
> (both free and proprietary), Windows, MacOS, AmigaOS, OS/2 etc.)).

In
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-user-200207/msg04836.html
I talk a bit about archivers and compression. An interesting archiver that
I'd like to become part of debian is Charles Bloom's ppmz2 (found at
http://www.cbloom.com ), but I believe it's license is currently not
Debian compatible (it may be good for non-free).

> ZOO:
>
> IMHO creating new ZOO-archives is not very important for us.
>
Some BBS sysops (if there still are any) may require zoo, especially for
fidonet like networks.

> ARJ:
>
> http://testcase.newmail.ru/
>
> It is under GNU GPL. I think it can also create ARJ-archives.
>
https://sourceforge.net/projects/arj is also under the GNU GPL and is
worth looking at too.

>
> RAR:
>
> http://www.unrarlib.org/
>
> that commandline tool. I don't know, if source code of that library
> has some code from Eugene Roschal.
>
Maybe it's worth asking Eugene Roschal (roshal at rarlab.com)? I'd check
the resources available at http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm such as
http://www.rarlab.com/rar/unrarsrc.tar.gz tucow's gpl'd console un-rar may
be based on this code.

> LHA:
>
If desired I'll check more into this archiver (again useful in ways zoo is
useful).

> ACE:
>
> They provide some statically linked Linux-binary for unpacking
> ACE-archives. If that file-format is not very secret, somebody might be
> able to create free unpacking-software for ACE-files. But feel free to
> negotiate with authors of WinAce.
>
Worth a try if anyone feels this is worth while. I haven't really seen
much packed with ace and ace doesn't rank well on
http://www.compression.ca

> ARC:
>
> This is very old archive-format. We only need some way to unpack those
> files. Fortunately, this was just announced at c.o.l.a:
>
> http://rus.members.beeb.net/nomarch.html
>
> It is meant to be free replacement for arc. It is under GNU GPL. It can
> also unpack Spark-files (common under Acorn Archimedes).
>
Interesting. For several people to be involved I would image that research
relating to patents and other lha archivers would have already been done
so I won't do any checking unless requested to.

 Drew Daniels

I'm looking for work. If you can help see:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umdanie8/resume.html

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Juhapekka Tolvanen]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, +16:01:15 EEST (UTC +0300),
Juhapekka Tolvanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pressed some keys:

Wow! wotsit.org have some docs about archive file formats, too:

http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=archive

http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?page=2&s=archive


Docs about format of LHA or LZH is here:

http://www.osirusoft.com/joejared/lzhformat.html

It has also some links to LHA-related WWW-pages.

I just got an idea: What if some old version of LHA has free enough
licence, so somebody could could create better free LHA-software out of
it? I mean that maybe somebody could do OpenSSH-like things with LHA.


-- 
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * * University of Jyväskylä * * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~juhtolv/index.html * * * * "STRAIGHT BUT NOT NARROW!!"
"Vesi hakkaa minua maahan, kuin tuhat lekaa ja miljoona vasaraa. Niinkuin
lauletaan, niin happi räjähtää ja kauniista kaunein kädet ojentaa." Apulanta

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Branden Robinson]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 04:01:15PM +0300, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> When I run command "vrms" in my Debian GNU/Linux, most of those non-free
> packages it finds are packers and/or unpackers.

While not the best team in their league, I think you'll find that even
the Packers aren't so bad that they play for free.



-- 
G. Branden Robinson|
Debian GNU/Linux   | Music is the brandy of the damned.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- George Bernard Shaw
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |


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Description: PGP signature

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Juhapekka Tolvanen]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, +19:26:12 EEST (UTC +0300),
Clint Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pressed some keys:

> > So, where is that public-domain software for extracting ZOO-files?
> > Somebody must find it and then create Debian-package of it. IMHO
> > creating new ZOO-archives is not very important for us.
> 
> IIRC, the ZOO extracters were Ooz and Looz.

Cool! With a little help from FTP Search, that was moved to Alltheweb, I
wandered to the garbo.uwasa.fi:

http://garbo.uwasa.fi/cgi-bin/gsearch.cgi?search_string=ooz&ignore_case=&search_section=pc&maxmatch=100

http://garbo.uwasa.fi/cgi-bin/gsearch.cgi?search_string=ooz&ignore_case=&search_section=unix&maxmatch=100

ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/unix/arcers/booz.Z


-- 
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * * University of Jyväskylä * * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~juhtolv/index.html * * * * "STRAIGHT BUT NOT NARROW!!"
"Vesi hakkaa minua maahan, kuin tuhat lekaa ja miljoona vasaraa. Niinkuin
lauletaan, niin happi räjähtää ja kauniista kaunein kädet ojentaa." Apulanta

Re: How to get rid of non-free packers?

[Clint Adams]

> So, where is that public-domain software for extracting ZOO-files?
> Somebody must find it and then create Debian-package of it. IMHO
> creating new ZOO-archives is not very important for us.

IIRC, the ZOO extracters were Ooz and Looz.