ubuntu-archive: distributing files without license to distribute

[Paul Wise (Debian)]

The Ubuntu archive appears to be distributing some files that Debian
had to remove from our systems due to not being legally distributable.

The Debian derivatives census found these files are distributed by
Ubuntu but not by Debian snapshots due to not being distributable:

webkitgtk_2.4.0.orig.tar.xz
ctn_3.0.6.orig.tar.gz
figlet_2.2.2.orig.tar.gz
pyopencl_0.92.orig.tar.gz

The removals of these from Debian snapshots are listed here:

http://snapshot.debian.org/removal/38
http://snapshot.debian.org/removal/34
http://snapshot.debian.org/removal/32
http://snapshot.debian.org/removal/30

The census source package comparison output for Ubuntu is here:

http://deriv.debian.net/Ubuntu/sources.log.warnings

I suggest that the Ubuntu Archive Team follow this log of removals:

http://snapshot.debian.org/removal/

Unfortunately there is no RSS feed but urlwatch should work.

I expect Ubuntu is also distributing other packages from that page.

 affects launchpad
 subscribe ubuntu-archive

--
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The only one of these in a currently supported release of Ubuntu is webkitgtk 2.4.0, which is in trusty; trusty is in ESM support only and will stop being supported at all next April. We have already been distributing this binary for 7 years. In the absence of specific notice from the copyright holder, rather than doing the necessary archive surgery to remove this tarball, I'm inclined to let it age out next year.