[Replicant] Replicant 6.0

Wolfgang Wiedmeyer wreg at wiedmeyer.de
Wed Jan 13 13:41:44 UTC 2016


The last weeks I was successful in getting rid of prebuilt binaries from
the source. I could build the necessary GCC/LLVM and jack/jill
toolchains from source and reduce the general amount of prebuilt
binaries by also replacing them with software that already comes with
Debian. I did not yet have the time to include all of this in my
public repositories, though.

While working on this, some questions came up, which I want to ask the free
software experts on this list. A lot of this prebuilt binaries are
accompanied with very little or not easy accessible information and I am
wondering if this is enough to be compliant with free software licences.

An example: Is it enough to place a text file along the binary which
only includes a pointer to a source code directory and the hint that the
binary can be built using this source code, but no further instructions
how the binary can build using that source code are included? Also, there might be no
information from exactly which version of the source code the binary was
built. Even looking at git logs might not help to identify the exact
version.

Another example: A jar file is not accompanied with any hint at
all. Opening the jar reveals a version.property that includes a
hash. With a bit experience one might know that this hash belongs to a git
commit. However, the actual repository with this commit cannot be
identified going through the jar. Only by searching the web, some
experience with the Android platform/toolchain build system and guessing
From the name of the jar, one might be able to identify the
repository. Then the build instructions are still missing and it is
investigative work and again experience necessary in order to figure out
how the jar might have been build from the source code.

Last question: What if some these jars were built using a non-free java
version?

Already may thanks for your input on this!

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