Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Russ Allbery]

Bill Allombert  writes:

> The point is that if there are licenses not in common-licenses that are
> much more common than CC0, it would make more sense to add them rather
> than CC0.

license-count says that CC0-1.0 looks pretty good.  Here are the complete
results with patterns for CC0-1.0 added.  (Note that this is matching on
any License:.*CC0 pattern in debian/copyright, which could be an overcount
if there are any other versions than 1.0.)

AGPL 3  189
Apache 2.0 2672
Artistic   3804
Artistic 2.0200
BSD (common-licenses)   104
CC-BY 1.0 2
CC-BY 2.0 3
CC-BY 2.511
CC-BY 3.0   165
CC-BY 4.028
CC-BY-SA 1.0  3
CC-BY-SA 2.0 44
CC-BY-SA 2.5 14
CC-BY-SA 3.0285
CC-BY-SA 4.0 61
CC0-1.0 195
CDDL 56
CeCILL   18
CeCILL-B  7
CeCILL-C 10
GFDL (any)  534
GFDL (symlink)   88
GFDL 1.2314
GFDL 1.3138
GPL (any) 18429
GPL (symlink)  2741
GPL 1  3541
GPL 2  9564
GPL 3  5041
LGPL (any) 4552
LGPL (symlink)  484
LGPL 2 3510
LGPL 2.1   2520
LGPL 3  981
LaTeX PPL33
LaTeX PPL (any)  43
LaTeX PPL 1.3c   34
MPL 1.1 224
MPL 2.0 176
SIL OFL 1.0  12
SIL OFL 1.1 159

Total number of packages: 30676

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   

Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Sat, Dec 09 2017, Bill Allombert wrote:

> What work are you referring to ?

Longer copyright files are more painful to edit.

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Bill Allombert]

On Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 11:53:51AM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Sat, Dec 09 2017, Bill Allombert wrote:
> 
> > See the file tools/license-count in the policy git repo and look up
> > the debian-policy list archive for previous statistics.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> > The point is that if there are licenses not in common-licenses that
> > are much more common than CC0, it would make more sense to add them
> > rather than CC0.
> 
> I don't think this is a good argument.  For example, it may be that the
> other CC-* licenses are more common than CC0.  But there are complex
> reasons why adding those CC-* licenses to common-licenses will take more
> work.  We shouldn't let that block adding CC0 just because it is not the
> most common CC license.

What work are you referring to ? What I have described is the common
practice for managing common-licenses which was used so far as you can
see in the archive.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. 

Imagine a large red swirl here. 

Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Sat, Dec 09 2017, Bill Allombert wrote:

> See the file tools/license-count in the policy git repo and look up
> the debian-policy list archive for previous statistics.

Thanks.

> The point is that if there are licenses not in common-licenses that
> are much more common than CC0, it would make more sense to add them
> rather than CC0.

I don't think this is a good argument.  For example, it may be that the
other CC-* licenses are more common than CC0.  But there are complex
reasons why adding those CC-* licenses to common-licenses will take more
work.  We shouldn't let that block adding CC0 just because it is not the
most common CC license.

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Bill Allombert]

On Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 10:26:26AM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello Bill,
> 
> On Sat, Dec 09 2017, Bill Allombert wrote:
> 
> > So, what is the percentage of packages under this license ?  This has
> > always been the criterium used to put it in common-licenses.
> 
> Could you say more, please?  What was the percentage used in the past?

See the file tools/license-count in the policy git repo and
look up the debian-policy list archive for previous statistics.

> We might want to revise that percentage because of how cheap disc space
> is nowadays.  It's also not clear whether the saving is significant for
> low disc space systems; someone on -devel this week said that they just
> have to rm -rf /usr/share/doc anyway.
> 
> It might also be worth considering the fact that having licenses in
> common-licenses makes editing d/copyright easier for package
> maintainers.  Previously this was overridden by disc space concerns but
> that might not make sense anymore.

Yet there is a bug open about removing changelog files to save space.

The point is that if there are licenses not in common-licenses that are
much more common than CC0, it would make more sense to add them
rather than CC0.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. 

Imagine a large red swirl here. 

Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Sean Whitton]

Hello Bill,

On Sat, Dec 09 2017, Bill Allombert wrote:

> So, what is the percentage of packages under this license ?  This has
> always been the criterium used to put it in common-licenses.

Could you say more, please?  What was the percentage used in the past?

We might want to revise that percentage because of how cheap disc space
is nowadays.  It's also not clear whether the saving is significant for
low disc space systems; someone on -devel this week said that they just
have to rm -rf /usr/share/doc anyway.

It might also be worth considering the fact that having licenses in
common-licenses makes editing d/copyright easier for package
maintainers.  Previously this was overridden by disc space concerns but
that might not make sense anymore.

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Bug#859649: debian-policy: Please add CC0-1.0 to common-licenseso

[Bill Allombert]

On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 12:13:25PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Fri, Dec 08 2017, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> 
> > diff --git a/policy/ch-docs.rst b/policy/ch-docs.rst index
> > dc02bc6..1de221f 100644 --- a/policy/ch-docs.rst +++
> > b/policy/ch-docs.rst @@ -208,11 +208,12 @@ important because
> > ``copyright`` files must be extractable by mechanical
> >  means.
> >
> >  Packages distributed under the Apache license (version 2.0), the
> > -Artistic license, the GNU GPL (versions 1, 2, or 3), the GNU LGPL
> > -(versions 2, 2.1, or 3), the GNU FDL (versions 1.2 or 1.3), and the
> > -Mozilla Public License (version 1.1 or 2.0) should refer to the
> > -corresponding files under ``/usr/share/common-licenses``, [#]_ rather
> > -than quoting them in the copyright file.  +Artistic license, the
> > Creative Commons CC0-1.0 license, the GNU GPL +(versions 1, 2, or 3),
> > the GNU LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), the GNU FDL +(versions 1.2 or
> > 1.3), and the Mozilla Public License (version 1.1 or +2.0) should
> > refer to the corresponding files under
> > +``/usr/share/common-licenses``, [#]_ rather than quoting them in the
> > +copyright file.
> >
> >  You should not use the copyright file as a general ``README``
> >  file. If your package has such a file it should be installed in
> > @@ -341,6 +342,7 @@ please see :ref:`s-dpkgchangelog`.
> >  .. [#]
> > In particular, ``/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0``,
> > ``/usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic``,
> > + ``/usr/share/common-licenses/CC0-1.0``,
> > ``/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-1``,
> > ``/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2``,
> > ``/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3``,
> 
> Seconded.

So, what is the percentage of packages under this license ?
This has always been the criterium used to put it in common-licenses.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. 

Imagine a large red swirl here.