[AstroPy] astropy in Debian, Scientific Linux?

[Tom Aldcroft]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 5:50 PM, Sergio Pascual <sergio.pasra at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the past year we had a discussion about SOFA, an IAU library astropy depends
> on, see the details here:
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/astropy-dev/QVpMZFlsQUo/discussion
>
> In short:
>
>  * The Fedora legal team reviewed the SOFA license and they considered it
> non-free.
>  * I wrote the SOFA board asking for a license change, they did not answered
> my request
>  * SOFA and (any program depending on it) *astropy* cannot be included in
> Fedora or EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) with the current SOFA
> license.
>  * astropy could be included by *removing* SOFA and the modules depending on
> it (astropy.time ?)
>  * somebody could package SOFA and astropy in rpmfusion.org, which provides
> non-free/free-with-legal-problems packages for Fedora and EPEL
>  * or in a different Fedora repository that provides
>  * I think the situation in Debian is different

Sergio,

I wonder if it might be worth trying again with SOFA.  Things are a
little different now since at this point there are real users that are
unable to use our (and their) software because of their license.  This
is very frustrating.

I wonder if we could organize a petition in support of modifying the
SOFA license to something more consistent with typical community
standards.  I mean the IAU is supposed to be representing and
benefiting astronomers, no?

Thanks,
Tom

>
> Not having precompiled packages available in Fedora/EPEL is very bad for
> astropy in my opinion. From a small sample of 20
> Professors-Postdocs-Students in my Astrophysics Department, I can say that
> only those doing software development use "pip". The vast majority use "yum"
> in Fedora or "fink/macports" in Mac to bring in the package and continue
> doing Science.
>
> Regards, Sergio
>
>
>
> 2013/4/7 Leo Singer <lsinger at caltech.edu>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I would like to use Astropy on Debian and Scientific Linux. My experiment
>> is pretty strict about using packaged software. Are there are there any
>> plans to create .debs or .rpms for Astropy?
>>
>> I know how to create packages for both platforms, so I could help, but I
>> don't (yet) know much about how the Debian and Scientific Linux/Red
>> Hat/Fedora communities work, so I would not yet know where or how to submit
>> them.
>>
>> Best,
>> Leo Singer
>> Graduate Student @ LIGO-Caltech
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>
>
>
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