[Fedora-packaging] Including a patched version of an upstream library -- advice?

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 11:16 +0100, Mary Ellen Foster wrote:
> So I decided to try upping my own review karma by trying to review
> some outstanding Java packages. Unfortunately, I seem to have chosen
> one with an "interesting" issue:
>     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=464013
> 
> The package in question is "findbugs-bcel": an alternative version of
> the bcel library (already in Fedora), including a fairly large patch
> from the developers of the "findbugs" package. There seems to be no
> hope of getting this patch into upstream bcel (e.g.,
> https://mailman.cs.umd.edu/pipermail/findbugs-discuss/2007-April/001880.html).
> There was a short discussion on this on fedora-devel-list last year:
> http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2007-September/msg00865.html
> 
> What's the official policy here?

Hmmm. This is definitely open source fail.

So, here is my opinion:

If the bcel maintainer is okay with this, and the findbugs-bcel package
does not conflict in any way whatsoever... alright. I'm not happy about
it, but I don't want to be a pain in a situation that isn't going to be
resolved properly anytime soon.

~spot