On Sat, 14 Feb 2026, Simon Josefsson wrote:n > Is anyone following the policy? https://www.debian.org/legal/patent
Because of the necessity to maintain attorney client privilege, there may not be any public evidence of Debian following the policy. > Is a violation against the policy RC-worthy? If someone knew (or thought) that we were distributing software that violated a specific patent, they should e-mail [email protected] to discuss the issue. They shouldn't file a bug, nor should they discuss it on this mailing list. They may be wrong or right, but discussing it here could expose Debian to additional risk. > If we would start to look, I believe there are tons of violations in > Debian here, to the point where one would quickly question if > enforcing this policy is a realistic goal. Patent encumbered FOSS is > widely deployed these days. Determining whether a specific application is likely to infringe on an enforceable patent is incredibly tricky, and requires significant domain knowledge in both the area of the patent and case law in the domain of the patent (and always involves some amount of uncertainty). Multiply that complication by the number of patent systems that Debian is distributed in and the complexity is even higher. Without that knowledge (which in my experience usually involves a team of experts), it's challenging to weigh the risks of infringing. If you have knowledge of violations or are concerned about a specific patent, follow the policy and notify [email protected], not this mailing list. -- Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com He was wrong. Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and the chuck keys for electric drills. -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p166
