Tollef Fog Heen <[email protected]> writes: > However, If you do claim that it is copyrightable by putting a license > on it, I think using a different license than upstream is poor > form. Packaging someone's work is, hopefully, a respectful and > collaborative activity with upstream where they'll accomodate reasonable > requests from the packager, and vice versa. Choosing a different > license than upstream seems like adding unnecessary friction to that > relationship. (This assumes a free license for the upstream code, if > it's non-free, I'd say different expectations apply.)
I agree with that, but there are plenty of examples of the contrary in well-established parts of Debian. Many Debian maintainers disagree with upstream maintainers on a wide variety of matters, including licensing (example: refusing to package GFDL documentation, even without Invariant sections, or refusal to contribute back improvements on anything licensed under the GFDL) or cryptographic choice (example: Debian patches GnuPG away from upstream wishes, introducing incompatibility). I think this is generally unproductive and leads to poor relationship between Debian and upstreams. I believe that kind of behaviour and attitude often is a consequence of the strong package-ownership model in Debian, where a Debian package maintainer regard themselves as owner of a package to such an extent that they are privileged enough to ignore requests from upstream or other parts of Debian. I do not see the same extent of that behaviour in communities without strong package ownership. IMHO, if a Debian package maintainer has a strong enough idea of how some upstream package should behave, that is incompatible with upstream, they should fork the project, rather than adding patches in Debian to their own liking. This is the FOSSy respectful way to act if you disagree with project decisions, and this option needs to be feasible in a health FOSS eco-system. Patching project X into something else and shipping it as project X is disrepectful. /Simon
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