Package: dh-make Version: 0.48 Severity: wishlist Dear Craig,
the dh-make templates are very influential and I think that many packagers are using the GNU GPL license for their packaging work because of them. As a consequence some valuable files they produce, like manpages or patches, can have a license more restrictive than the packaged work itself. I have witnessed at least one upstream author being very displeased with this situation, who wrote a public reminder that GPLed contributions will not be accepted in his BSD-licensed project. Furthermore, in the case of works licensed under GPL version 2 only, the situation is problematic as well since dh-make suggests the incompatible GPL version 3 for the packaging work. Lastly, since the dh-make wording suggests that the packaging may not be upgraded to future versions of the GPL, as it lacks ‘or any later version’, we can expect a lot of difficulties when some upstream projects will update their licensing to higher versions of the GPL, as it may result in some packaging works becoming incompatible with upstream works in situations where the original authors are not available for relicensing. How about replacing in the templates the GPL-3 statement by the following: # Please chose a license for your packaging work. If the program you package # uses a mainstream license, using the same license is the safest choice. # Please avoid to pick license terms that are more restrictive than the # packaged work, as it may make Debian’s contributions unacceptable usptream. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
