Ben Finney writes ("Re: unknown license for package/debian/* in d/copyright in adopted package"): > Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes: > > I would encourage everyone who does packaging to explictly licence > > your debian/* with some very permissive licence (eg, MIT). > > I default to grating “GPLv3 or later” for mine; often I'll change > that to match the upstream work's license grant. > > I don't see any special reason to prefer lax license grants for Debian > packaging, so I default to copyleft.
It is often useful to copy Debian packaging snippets from one package to another. That requires that the packaging of the first package have a licence which is compatible with the upstream licence of the second. In practice that means a permissive licence. This benefit IMO far outweighs the risk that at some point someone will abuse our goodwill to make Debian-format source packages out of proprietary software. No-one, not even evil people, would want to do that. In practice no-one except Debian and its free software derivatives makes Debian-format source packages; everyone else has an ad-hoc build script that spits out some .debs. > The principle is to consider what a hypothetical future package > maintainer, or FTP master or recipient, will need to have to verify the > copyright holder does in fact grant the stated license. > > I agree that having the message be cryptographically signed is not > necessary, but it is good to have if feasible. > > The important thing is that the grant be explicit, specific as to which > work and which license terms, and that it all be clearly in writing. Do you agree that my mail exchange as found in the sympathy package is a good example of how to ask these questions, and how to record the answers ? Ian. -- Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own. If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.