Description of problem: Flexiblas contains a large number of autogenerated files. However, it seems there is no way to autogenerated them during the build process, and neither is fedora doing it. This feels like a violation of my freedom to modify the code, but I first want toa ask whether I am missing something, before I ask legal@ for verification Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): v3.0.1 (I used upstream source) How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. mkdir build ; cd build 2. cmake -S ../ -B . # no error 3. grep Generated .. -r|cut -d: -f1|xargs rm 4. cmake -S ../ -B . #fails Actual results: -- ------------------------------------------------ -- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred! See also "~/soft/flexiblas-release/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log". See also "~/soft/flexiblas-release/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log". Expected results: generated files are recreated Additional info: I couldn't find any documentation on the generation.
I don't understand what's the issue here. You are removing source files. How would you expect the build process to succeed without them? What's the difference between a source file being generated by hand or by means of a script? How does this violate any freedom to modify those source files?
While you call them source files, they are not the source of the code. The true source is somewhere else. Thus the source is not open, but non-free, and only this intermediate representation is available. This is the first step towards only shipping binaries. The main question is for me, is the real source included in the release / available to users?
No, you are wrong. This is the real source. You are twisting the definition of source. Following your reasoning, the original source is in the author's brain, so open source software doesn't exist. I don't know what else to say, but please, ask legal.
Generated source files are fine as long as the mechanism to generate the files are available *somewhere*: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/what-can-be-packaged/#_pregenerated_code In this case, these files appear to be generated interface files to shim APIs through FlexiBLAS. There is no reasonable way for us to be able to regenerate those files from scratch, as we would not necessarily be able to provide all the variants it shims. Moreover, these files are licensed correctly. It is not required that we regenerate the files as part of the build. But if it were necessary to patch it, we need a safe way to do so properly. However, I think it is quite unlikely that we would do so with the generated files included.
Sorry, it's still not clear to me. Is there currently any legal issue with this? Should I ask upstream to include the scripts or not?
(In reply to Iñaki Ucar from comment #5) > Sorry, it's still not clear to me. Is there currently any legal issue with > this? Should I ask upstream to include the scripts or not? Yes, getting the scripts included with the appropriate FOSS license so that it's possible to generate them if desired would help.
The new patch release includes the scripts under tools/code_generators.