On Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 02:04:44PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
Hi dear fellow Debian developers,When I package a project for inclusion into Debian, I commonly license my packaging work using a copyleft license¹. I appreciate that upstream authors may have reasons to choose different licensing, and am open to relicense non-packaging parts (e.g. patches). Sometimes I proactively license patches potential for upstream adoption same as upstream, but generally I don't - patches are often arguably too small to be copyright-protected, or might contain contributions from multiple authors - in short, it is simpler for me to ensure that the packaging parts are all DFSG-free than that they are all compliant with upstream choice of licensing, and I see no need for the packaging part to be compliant with upstream choice of licensing.My question here is: Am I doing a disservice to Debian?
*shrug*I haven't been in situations where this matters, but I may have seen discussions of those a couple of times.
It's certainly one of those things that may force people to spend more time and brain power on such packaging in various situations though.
Do Debian already have a Policy about this?
No, but AFAIK the project consensus is "a simple permissive license or the same license as the upstream; but also maybe the license doesn't matter because it's not copyrightable".
If not, should we add one?
"You must license your packaging under these licenses" seems unusual to me as a written policy, but maybe it's fine.
-- WBR, wRAR
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