Hi, On Tue, 2026-06-16 at 08:42 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: > So maybe the DFSG team could decide that we gave an exception to the > DFSG to these copyright holders only, that we note that it pushes on our > users the duty to check the copyright file of every package they use in > case they want to mention them in advertisements, and that because this > is too unreasonable we will not grant exceptions anymore to new > packages, for the 4-clause BSD and for any other similar license?
That seems horrible: license X is DFSG-free, but only if the copyright holder is Y. Once there is a second copyright holder due to a patch getting applied, it is no longer free and would need removal from Debian? It seems also against the spirit of "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" as we discriminate against copyright holders... (Yes, I know it's not a license condition.) I would recommend not making licenses non-free retroactively just because they contain annoying clauses like GPL-2's requirement to add "notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change" of any modified file (which Debian just ignores anyway) or some advertisement clauses (which probably get handled in practice much like the aforementioned GPL clause). Ansgar
