Hi Paul, On Mon, Jan 08, 2024 at 12:54:25PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > On Fri, 2024-01-05 at 22:31 -0800, Ross Vandegrift wrote: > > > Imagine I take some code from a freely licensed reference implementation and > > customize it. The result is a derived work. But this embedding isn't > > removable - the reference implementation shouldn't accept changes to > > integrate > > it into a specific project. > > The reference implementation should be flexible enough to work as a > library imported/loaded/linked by any project that wants to use it.
Perhaps - but some people provide code without having any interest in the implementation details that users might run into. Still, that code might be useful to use & distribute. This is one of many ways Debian and upstream might have different or conflicting goals. > > It'd be reasonable to include the original license and copyright statements. > > Right. > > > If I do, Debian requires packagers to describe the license and copyright on > > those embedded license/copyright files. And I'm puzzled about how to do > > that > > best. > > Same as for any other file in the source package, list in the > debian/copyright which files have which copyrights and licenses. Heh, right - the problem is executing that. :) Folks typically take care to document the copyright on code, not so often licenses (the FSF licenses being the exception, they are clear). > > (I realize not much hangs on this - but cme/licensecheck raised the issue to > > me. I can ignore it, but also got curious and tried to figure out what to > > do.) > > What issue did it print? Which package/code is this about BTW? src:efl is a pastice of original work, dervied code, and vendored copies. The situation I asked about is somewhat simplified from real ones. Here's two harder cases than what the wiki considers: - https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-e-team/efl/-/blob/debian/sid/src/static_libs/rg_etc/README This is a Zlib license statement for code derived from another project. This copy has been rewritten from C++ -> C. So the changes wouldn't be appropriate for the upstream project. What license and copyright holders can I write for this file? The text is derived from the Zlib license, but I also don't know who wrote that. - https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-e-team/efl/-/blob/debian/sid/src/static_libs/fnmatch/COPYRIGHT This is from an included copy of musl's fnmatch algorithm. I think EFL includes this for portability, to ensure that the same fnmatch is used on Linux, BSD, and Windows. Even if that's not needed in Debian, I don't think I can link to musl and glibc. Interestingly, base-files (which contains /usr/share/common-licenses) doesn't contain any copyright information for some of it's licenses. It also doesn't use dep5 copyright, and so probably not licensechcek/cme. So no one is being bugged to document who holds the copyright to the MPL-1.1. Ross [1] - src:efl has those too. I'm recently trying to remove a libunbreak copy in the static_libs directory.
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