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I know it is simple to download and install but so are many other applications such as phpmyadmin, drupal and Zend Framework and they are all just an apt-get away.

Why is there no package for magento in the repositories or apparently from anywhere else?

Is it a licensing issue? The software is dual licensed under a commercial license and Open Software License (OSL 3.0).

karel
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Richard Holloway
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2 Answers2

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Part of the issue might be with Debian ruling the OSL V1.1 (Magento is now under 3.0) as a non-free license. Conversations on the debian-legal mailing list went:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/osl.php

We did this one a few months back, but nobody raised the patent/reciprocity thing at that time. Here's the offending clause:

10) Mutual Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims that are essential to use that software.

I think this one's non-free too. It's certainly absurdly overbearing.

And more on that here.

It still seems to be GPL-incompatible because of the way it adds extra restrictions. I didn't think GPL compatibility was a necessity for universe inclusion, but Debian getting in a fluster over it will have stalled the upstream packaging process.

There's no reason why that should have stopped an Ubuntu user from packaging it. It just needs somebody who's willing to take up the task. I should add that this is not a one-off job. Security updates need to be pushed as soon as they're available.

Oli
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Have a look at the list of all applications that need to be included in the repositories: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.tag=needs-packaging There is more than 2k entries. I think it's not packaged for ubuntu only because the packagers don't have enough time, as there is lots of other work to do.

The license rarely is a problem. Note that quite a lot of free commercially-licenced applications are packaged for ubuntu (proprietary drivers or Adobe Flash for example).

Rafał Cieślak
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