[libvoikko] HFST packaging

[Harri Pitkänen]

On Friday 06 September 2013 07:58:25 Sjur Moshagen wrote:
> I don't follow. What needs to be (re)distributable is the hfst-ospell
> library. That part is completely independent of the hfst3 code, and thus
> also free of the possible Foma license conflict.

In the original message from May Timo asked about hfst and hfst-ospell and 
that's why I wanted to check them both.

Yes, we could just package hfst-ospell but the ultimate goal for this whole 
exercise is to improve the language support in Debian and that cannot be done 
without packaging the dictionaries as well. And you can't have a dictionary in 
the main Debian distributions unless it can be built using tools that are in 
Debian. For this we will need to package the hfst tools.

> To build zhfst files you may need foma for some languages, potentially all
> Giellatekno/Divvun languages at the moment, but work is ongoing in the hfst
> camp to reimplement the functionality covered by Foma that is required by
> these languages. So future versions of the Giellatekno/Divvun languages
> should be independent of this license conflict too.

This sounds good.

> And lastly: I understand the license warning is about redistributing the
> hfst3 binaries, not the compiled language models in the zhfst binaries.

The current situation would make ZHFST binaries unredistributable in Debian 
main and other places that have a policy of requiring the use of free 
compilers. Legally they might be redistributable (I guess).

> This - in combination with the fact that hfst-ospell (on which the hfst
> support in libvoikko is built) has no dependency on Foma - makes me
> conclude that there is no problem for a hfst-enabled libvoikko being
> redistributed.

Yes, there is no problem at all with distributing hfst-enabled libvoikko.

> If the requirement is that everything should be buildable from source, then
> I also don't see any problem - as long as you always distribute *only* the
> source for hfst3, and force every installation to build the hfst3 binaries
> each time. Then no hfst3 binaries are redistributed.

I have no idea about this one.

Harri