A while back, I started a thread to discuss the license of python-debian on the now defunct pkg-python-debian-discuss list. [1]
Back then, dann frazier, Enrico Zini, Reinhard Tartler and Stuart Prescott all replied they were OK with a license change. There are still quite a few copyright holders and contributors that I need to reach out to! I am trying to complete this now so here is my question: If you are a copyright holder in python-debian, would you agree to a relicensing such that it can be used as a library for projects using a permissive, non-GPL license? Background/original message ======================= python-debian is the canonical library to handle debian files. It is GPL-licensed yet also used as a library by quite a few tools [2] that are not GPL-licensed but rather ISC, MIT, Apache and similar both at debian and elsewhere. Would the copyleft of python-debian flow to a tool or library that is calling and using python-debian as a library? If yes, could it make sense to consider some sorts of licensing update either for all these FOSS libraries or rather for python-debian proper such that the effective licensing of these tools may not be impacted? PS: I am maintaining origin and license code scanning tools written in Python [3] and I am considering to add a dependency on python-debian to export valid machine readable copyright files created from a scancode license and copyright file [4]. The licensed toolkit is Apache-licensed. And the TODO for me: these are the contributors that still need to be contacted. A. main contributors =============== The following individuals have not replied to the original email. Based on a gitstats run [5] they have contributed 10 lines of code or more, in order of decreasing contribution size: - John Wright <[email protected]> - James Westby <[email protected]> - Stefano Zacchiroli <[email protected]> - Filippo Giunchedi <[email protected]> - Colin Watson <[email protected]> - Adeodato Simó <[email protected]> - Tshepang Lekhonkhobe <[email protected]> - Ville Skyttä <[email protected]> - Jelmer Vernooij <[email protected]> I will reach out to them off list directly (asking them for an on-list reply). (See the table below in D. for the full list of contributors) B. dpkg contributors ==================== In changelog.py we have this notice: # The parsing code is based on that from dpkg which is: # Copyright 1996 Ian Jackson # Copyright 2005 Frank Lichtenheld <[email protected]> # and licensed under the same license as above. I will be reaching out offlist to two: - Ian Jackson <[email protected]> - Frank Lichtenheld <[email protected]> or <[email protected]> C. Other contributors ===================== These other individuals have contributed a few lines either through a commit or a patch acknowledged in a commit message and/or a changelog entry. I do not think we need their OK for a license change. I can reach out to them too if you think this is important, but I am not planning to for now: if you are one of these, your ack on list would be much welcomed in any case! With an email attached to their name in the log or commit: - Ben Finney <[email protected]> - Chris Lamb <[email protected]> - Fathi Boudra <[email protected]> - Florian Weimer <[email protected]> - Gerhard Poul <[email protected]> - Guillem Jover <[email protected]> - Jan Teske <[email protected]> - Jonny Lamb <[email protected]> - Julian Andres Klode <[email protected]> - Matthieu Caneill <[email protected]> - Maximiliano Curia <[email protected]> - Ole Streicher <[email protected]> - Philipp Hahn <[email protected]> - Stefano Rivera <[email protected]> - Steve Kowalik <[email protected]> Without an email attached to their name: - Alexandre Fayolle - Barry Warsaw - Mika Eloranta - Muharem Hrnjadovic - Neil Williams - Piotr Ożarowski - Romain Francoise - Tilman Koschnick D. Main contributors ==================== Here is a subset of the gitstats [5] output with the number of commits, added and removed lines: Author Commits (%) +lines -lines ======================================================= Stuart Prescott 187 (31.75%) 33635 20383 John Wright 120 (20.37%) 8434 4536 James Westby 67 (11.38%) 5691 1633 Stefano Zacchiroli 86 (14.60%) 5623 1952 Filippo Giunchedi 24 (4.07%) 3203 2679 Enrico Zini 24 (4.07%) 1103 377 Colin Watson 34 (5.77%) 939 550 Adeodato Simó 20 (3.40%) 162 170 Reinhard Tartler 8 (1.36%) 113 25 Tshepang Lekhonkhobe 1 (0.17%) 59 19 Ville Skyttä 2 (0.34%) 36 36 Jelmer Vernooij 2 (0.34%) 7 2 Jelmer Vernooij 2 (0.34%) 4 3 Stefano Rivera 1 (0.17%) 6 2 Ole Streicher 1 (0.17%) 5 0 Matthieu Caneill 1 (0.17%) 5 5 Jan Teske 1 (0.17%) 4 10 Ben Finney 3 (0.51%) 4 2 Guillem Jover 2 (0.34%) 3 3 Jonny Lamb 1 (0.17%) 1 0 [1]: https://alioth-lists-archive.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-python-debian-discuss/2017-March/thread.html [2]: Some examples: https://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/decopy.git/ is ISC licensed https://github.com/xolox/python-deb-pkg-tools is MIT licensed https://github.com/jwodder/aptrepo is MIT licensed https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pet/pet3.git/ seems to be ISC licensed https://github.com/sassoftware/python-debpkgr is Apache licensed [3]: https://github.com/nexB/ [4]: https://github.com/nexB/scancode-toolkit [5]: https://github.com/hoxu/gitstats -- Cordially Philippe Ombredanne -- https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-python-debian-maint
