Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Hi Nick, On Thu, 10. Jan 05:35 Nick Andrik nick.and...@gmail.com wrote: [...] My main question is what kind of license should I specify in debian/copyright for debian/* ? If we assume that the packagers who have worked on this package during its lifetime can agree to a license for the packaging part, what are the constraints? I am facing the same problem with my package zangband at the moment. The license is non-free and does not allow copying and distribution for profit purposes. I had to update the copyright because of bug 696916 and 696919 and decided to make it clear that the files for debian/* are free. I had chosen GPL-3+ for these files. The package got rejected by the release team who argues that it is very likely to make the resulting code undistributable if the debian packaging includes patches touching the upstream part. [1] Therefore i have prepared another version and i use the GNU All-Permissive license now. [2] I hope that this solves the issue but i haven't got a reply yet. On a side note, unace-nonfree also contains patches and the whole debian directory is made available under the GPL-2+ license. Maybe a permissive license is better suited then a copyleft license for such cases. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/697140 [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/All_002dpermissive-Copying-License.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
* Markus Koschany a...@gambaru.de, 2013-01-10, 11:11: I am facing the same problem with my package zangband at the moment. The license is non-free and does not allow copying and distribution for profit purposes. I had to update the copyright because of bug 696916 and 696919 and decided to make it clear that the files for debian/* are free. I had chosen GPL-3+ for these files. The package got rejected by the release team who argues that it is very likely to make the resulting code undistributable if the debian packaging includes patches touching the upstream part. [1] Therefore i have prepared another version and i use the GNU All-Permissive license now. [2] I hope that this solves the issue but i haven't got a reply yet. On a side note, unace-nonfree also contains patches and the whole debian directory is made available under the GPL-2+ license. Maybe a permissive license is better suited then a copyleft license for such cases. s/Maybe/Sure enough/ -- Jakub Wilk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110110857.ga1...@jwilk.net
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Hi, Paul Wise wrote (10 Jan 2013 05:35:25 GMT) : On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Nick Andrik wrote: The main reason I decided to deal with unrar is because of e-book reader calibre needing the libunrar.so library [1] in order to read CBR files. I see. FWIW, the GNOME archive manager (file-roller) knows how to use unar since 3.6, which is in experimental. The version in Wheezy does not (but knows how to use at least the non-free unrar). Cheers, -- intrigeri | GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc | OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/851udtqjmr@boum.org
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Quoting Markus Koschany (2013-01-10 11:11:30) Hi Nick, On Thu, 10. Jan 05:35 Nick Andrik nick.and...@gmail.com wrote: [...] My main question is what kind of license should I specify in debian/copyright for debian/* ? If we assume that the packagers who have worked on this package during its lifetime can agree to a license for the packaging part, what are the constraints? I am facing the same problem with my package zangband at the moment. The license is non-free and does not allow copying and distribution for profit purposes. I had to update the copyright because of bug 696916 and 696919 and decided to make it clear that the files for debian/* are free. I had chosen GPL-3+ for these files. The package got rejected by the release team who argues that it is very likely to make the resulting code undistributable if the debian packaging includes patches touching the upstream part. [1] Therefore i have prepared another version and i use the GNU All-Permissive license now. [2] I hope that this solves the issue but i haven't got a reply yet. On a side note, unace-nonfree also contains patches and the whole debian directory is made available under the GPL-2+ license. Maybe a permissive license is better suited then a copyleft license for such cases. I agree that patches need be compatible with the code the patches are applied onto, which for some non-free works cannot be a copyleft one. But you may not be copyright holder of said patches so cannot ahead choose a liberal license either. To me it makes sense to always declare a Files: debian/* section explicitly (except for Debian-native packages), and if patches are differently licensed (either because others did the licensing or because you did and are forced to license in a certain way to match wher it is applied) then additionally add a Files: debian/patches/* section. I always place debian sections as the last Files sections, like this: Files: * Copyright: [upstream] License: [non-free] ... Files: debian/* Copyright: [our team] License: [copyleft] Files: debian/patches/* Copyright: [our team or whoever actually holds copyright] License: [permissive or whatever others actually issued] (and then I place all License sections below that - I find that easiest to read, but that's outside of this discussion). - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 14:18 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: Quoting Markus Koschany (2013-01-10 11:11:30) Hi Nick, ... On a side note, unace-nonfree also contains patches and the whole debian directory is made available under the GPL-2+ license. Maybe a permissive license is better suited then a copyleft license for such cases. I agree that patches need be compatible with the code the patches are applied onto, which for some non-free works cannot be a copyleft one. But you may not be copyright holder of said patches so cannot ahead choose a liberal license either. This is a puzzling question for me: If you are the copyright holder of patches (they can be substantial) which license should apply? I have not seen this before, maybe I missed it. This question applies to free as well as non-free packages. 1) As a Debian patch, not forwarded upstream 2) The Debian Maintainer forwards the patch upstream 3) The patch submitter forwards the patch upstream The third case might be clear, what about the other two? Files: debian/patches/* Copyright: [our team or whoever actually holds copyright] License: [permissive or whatever others actually issued] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1357838482.25587.217.ca...@s1499.it.kth.se
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com writes: This is a puzzling question for me: If you are the copyright holder of patches (they can be substantial) which license should apply? Whatever license you want to put on it. However, it's going to need to be compatible with the upstream license or the resulting patched work will probably not be redistributable. I have not seen this before, maybe I missed it. This question applies to free as well as non-free packages. 1) As a Debian patch, not forwarded upstream 2) The Debian Maintainer forwards the patch upstream 3) The patch submitter forwards the patch upstream The third case might be clear, what about the other two? Actually, all of those cases are equivalent, and in all of those cases the patch author has the option of what license they want to use. It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that any patch submitted without any explicit license statement is licensed under the same terms as the upstream source. But that's just an assumption, and if upstream is being legally conservative in their license handling, they would require explicit statements of license in any patch. Similarly Debian for patches that we apply at build time. And some upstreams are that legally conservative; ones that require either a copyright assignment or a contributor agreement, for example, will usually have, somewhere in that paperwork, an explicit statement concerning licensing that the contributor agrees to. But there is a grand tradition of not crossing this T in all cases, and being more formally precise about it is probably not a good use of project time. I for one don't intend to start asking bug submitters about the license on their included patch unless I have some reason to believe they don't intend it to be covered by the upstream license; I think that would be more annoying than helpful. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87vcb5oskc@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 08:43:27AM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote: On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 06:50:57AM +, Bart Martens wrote: For the packages I maintain, I now refrain from doing so when the contents of the debian directory are trivial. I guess you don't bother to claim copyright for trivial debian/* files. When there is no copyright and license information for the debian/* files, then this can mean different things. From my perspective according to DEP5 it can only mean one thing: The license is the same as specified in Files: * and you blame the copyright holder mentioned in this stanca as copyright holder also for debian/*. That would be a fair assumption, but as long as the author of the debian/* files hasn't stated this, it's an assumption. The latter is no problem for simple debian/* dirs and using the same license as the code seems to be reasonable anyway. Sure, for simplicity it's best to use the same license. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110173635.ga28...@master.debian.org
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 09:29:07AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Actually, all of those cases are equivalent, and in all of those cases the patch author has the option of what license they want to use. It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that any patch submitted without any explicit license statement is licensed under the same terms as the upstream source. I guess you meant : It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that the copyright of any patch submitted without any explicit copyright and license statement is transferred (given) to the copyright holders of the upstream software. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110175428.gb28...@master.debian.org
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On 2013-01-10 17:54:28 + (+), Bart Martens wrote:
I guess you meant : It's conventional (although not entirely
legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that
the copyright of any patch submitted without any explicit
copyright and license statement is transferred (given) to the
copyright holders of the upstream software.
And in many cases it's convention to expect the patch contributor to
patch the copyright statement of the corresponding files as part of
their contribution, if they feel it's necessary. Many of the
projects I work on expect contributors to do precisely this as a
routine part of nontrivial patch submissions.
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Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 05:54:28PM +, Bart Martens wrote: I guess you meant : It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that the copyright of any patch submitted without any explicit copyright and license statement is transferred (given) to the copyright holders of the upstream software. Nope, that doesn't look conventional at all to me :-) $usually it is assumed that the copyright belongs to the patch author (assuming the patch is copyrightable in the first place…), whereas the license, which is often not declared by the patch author, is assumed to be the same of the code base you're contributing to. Of course, your value of $usually might vary. For those interested in this topic, an interesting debate of this convention happened ~1.5 years ago, as part of the FOSS-wide discussion on CAA/CLAs. Here are a couple of relevant contributions: - http://opensource.com/law/11/7/trouble-harmony-part-1 - http://opensource.com/law/11/7/trouble-harmony-part-2 Look for inbound=outbound in them. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Bart Martens ba...@debian.org writes: On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 09:29:07AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Actually, all of those cases are equivalent, and in all of those cases the patch author has the option of what license they want to use. It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that any patch submitted without any explicit license statement is licensed under the same terms as the upstream source. I guess you meant : It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that the copyright of any patch submitted without any explicit copyright and license statement is transferred (given) to the copyright holders of the upstream software. No, definitely not. The copyright stays with the original author, copyright notices nonwithstanding. (Copyright notices say nothing about who actually owns the copyright.) It's not possible to transfer copyright without legal paperwork (if it's possible to do so at all). -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87fw28q4vb@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 05:36:35PM +, Bart Martens wrote: From my perspective according to DEP5 it can only mean one thing: The license is the same as specified in Files: * and you blame the copyright holder mentioned in this stanca as copyright holder also for debian/*. That would be a fair assumption, but as long as the author of the debian/* files hasn't stated this, it's an assumption. I would not suggest anybody to do it this way and I explicitely enforce sponsees to add the Files: debian/* section even if they are upstream just to make things very explicite and clear. But if I have nothing explicite I need to assume something and finally a definition Files: * does also match Files: debian/* so what else should it mean if somebody leaves out the latter? Perhaps we should state this explicitely at http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ to give people a warning about this? Kind regards Andreas. -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110211412.ga8...@an3as.eu
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 05:54:28PM +, Bart Martens wrote: On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 09:29:07AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Actually, all of those cases are equivalent, and in all of those cases the patch author has the option of what license they want to use. It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that any patch submitted without any explicit license statement is licensed under the same terms as the upstream source. I guess you meant : It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that the copyright of any patch submitted without any explicit copyright and license statement is transferred (given) to the copyright holders of the upstream software. This is a far less common convention... precisely because it's far less legally sound. You can make a good faith assumption that someone who's sending you a patch for inclusion means for it to be under the same license; but copyright assignments need to be documented. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 01:46:52PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 05:54:28PM +, Bart Martens wrote: On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 09:29:07AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Actually, all of those cases are equivalent, and in all of those cases the patch author has the option of what license they want to use. It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that any patch submitted without any explicit license statement is licensed under the same terms as the upstream source. I guess you meant : It's conventional (although not entirely legally sound) in the free software community to just assume that the copyright of any patch submitted without any explicit copyright and license statement is transferred (given) to the copyright holders of the upstream software. This is a far less common convention... precisely because it's far less legally sound. You can make a good faith assumption that someone who's sending you a patch for inclusion means for it to be under the same license; but copyright assignments need to be documented. It's what happens in practice when I submit a patch upstream and don't say anything about my copyright. Upstream integrates the patch in the upstream source code and redistributes the result with upstream copyright and license. I think that this happens quite a lot. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110215610.gc28...@master.debian.org
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 09:56:10PM +, Bart Martens wrote: It's what happens in practice when I submit a patch upstream and don't say anything about my copyright. Upstream integrates the patch in the upstream source code and redistributes the result with upstream copyright and license. I think that this happens quite a lot. As mentioned already in this thread (by Russ, I think), the declared copyright owner(s) and the actual, legally valid, copyright owner(s) of a given contribution are not necessarily the same. In fact, chasing who are the real copyright owner(s) is a significant part of copyright litigations, including GPL enforcements. I know a couple of DDs who have professionally worked on this kind of activities. I can put you in touch with them if you want to know more about how, in practice, one find outs who the real copyright owners are. But the basics are what we can all imagine: inspecting VCS histories, patch submission to public mailing lists and bug trackers, etc. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Bart Martens ba...@debian.org writes: It's what happens in practice when I submit a patch upstream and don't say anything about my copyright. Upstream integrates the patch in the upstream source code and redistributes the result with upstream copyright and license. I think that this happens quite a lot. The Berne Convention effectively says that the copyright notice on a file is meaningless when it comes to determining the copyright holder or holders for the file's contents. That was one of the major standardizations in the Berne Convention: you no longer have to declare or register copyright in works. It happens automatically when the work is created. I don't know the law in all legal environments, but at least in the United States, the only legal purpose that the copyright notice serves is that it makes it difficult or impossible for the defendant to claim inadvertant violation and it makes additional legal damages possible in a lawsuit. It has no bearing on the actual copyright owners of a work and is completely optional. The primary reason why Debian cares about copyright notices is that most of our licenses require their preservation and (as a distant second) it can make it easier to research contributors if there's some sort of dispute. There's no actual legal need for them unless the license requires them. In at least US law, and I'm fairly certain EU law as well, unless you have explicitly signed a legal contract to transfer your copyright interest to some other party, you still hold the copyright on every creative work that you've made, including any patches that you've written that qualify as creative works. Whether or not you added a copyright, whether or not the modified files are marked as such, and even if someone else slapped their copyright notice on it. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87lic0liwl@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Russ Allbery r...@debian.org writes: In at least US law, and I'm fairly certain EU law as well, unless you have explicitly signed a legal contract to transfer your copyright interest to some other party, you still hold the copyright on every creative work that you've made, including any patches that you've written that qualify as creative works. Whether or not you added a copyright, whether or not the modified files are marked as such, and even if someone else slapped their copyright notice on it. I should have said here: modulo work for hire. (That can be seen as just a particularly common form of legal contract, but at least in the US it's phrased differently: the copyright isn't transferred, but rather is always held by the employer in a work-for-hire scenario.) -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87hamoliqe@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Nick Andrik nick.and...@gmail.com writes: My problem was when I had to specify a license for the debian/* files. I contacted the people that own the copyright of those files proposing a default license of GPL2+ (no strong feelings about that, just a suggestion). I was told that debian/copyright contains the text of the original non-free license, so debian/* cannot be distributed under GPL. I don't believe this is correct. Most license texts have no license at all, and hence by default under copyright law as creative works cannot be modified or redistributed, so a literal application of this would affect many other packages that similarly declare the packaging files to be covered by the GPL. We've generally treated license texts themselves as an exception to the general DFSG guidelines since they have a special position legally, and it's not at all clear that you can prohibit, legally, the redistribution of the terms of a license. (Particularly if that license itself says to distribute a copy of the license.) If you really want to represent this behavior, you could add a stanza that says that debian/copyright specifically is covered by the non-free license, but we haven't bothered with this with other packages. For example, the GPL license text itself does not, so far as I can tell, appear to be covered under any license, so it's not at all clear that you can distribute the GPL itself under the terms of the GPL. But we've never really worried about this; base-files (which includes copies of it) has a debian/copyright that declares the whole package to be covered by the GPL, with a note that the GPLs are copyrighted by the FSF. If someone felt like getting the authors of various licenses to put some sort of license on their licenses, I suppose it might be an interesting exercise in t-crossing, but I don't think you as an individual packager should need to worry excessively about this. This feels like one of those places where the law isn't a computer program and doesn't work according to strict, programmatic rules. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87fw29y9eg@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Nick Andrik wrote: Recently I was trying to convert the debian/copyright file of a non-free package ( unrar-nonfree ) to 1.0 format. The main license of this software is non-free (mainly because it does not allow reverse engineering of the RAR algorithm) but it also includes parts of software distributed under other licenses (BSD/public domain/GPL/etc). unrar-nonfree can probably be removed from Debian now that we have unar? -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6fvquhftzmr0dhj_xgquxd+rpmwgkovebmyo8x1937...@mail.gmail.com
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
Le Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 05:35:07AM +0200, Nick Andrik a écrit : My problem was when I had to specify a license for the debian/* files. Hi, Not all Debian source packages contain license or copyright notices for the files in the debian directory. It is therefore not strictly required to specify a license. For the packages I maintain, I now refrain from doing so when the contents of the debian directory are trivial. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110041329.gl31...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 06:26 +0200, Nick Andrik wrote: We have unrar-nonfree that builds the binary package unrar and unrar-free that builds the binary package unrar-free. We also have unar that builds the binary package unar. I guess you meant unrar-nonfree can probably be removed from Debian now that we have unrar-free? Definitely not, since unrar-free does not support the RAR format versions that unrar-nonfree or unar support. I suggest we can probably remove unrar-free and unrar-nonfree now that unar exists. unar doesn't support creating RAR format archives, so maybe rar needs to stay but personally I don't see much of a need for it. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
2013/1/10 Paul Wise p...@debian.org: On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Nick Andrik wrote: Recently I was trying to convert the debian/copyright file of a non-free package ( unrar-nonfree ) to 1.0 format. The main license of this software is non-free (mainly because it does not allow reverse engineering of the RAR algorithm) but it also includes parts of software distributed under other licenses (BSD/public domain/GPL/etc). unrar-nonfree can probably be removed from Debian now that we have unar? We have unrar-nonfree that builds the binary package unrar and unrar-free that builds the binary package unrar-free. I guess you meant unrar-nonfree can probably be removed from Debian now that we have unrar-free? This is a different issue which could be possibly discussed, but the question remains since we refer to the license of the license text, not the license itself (if I understand the issue well enough) Nick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CANn5kOtjPa79UoHyFEuUW=ge=krarri8ehgn4prp09mnsux...@mail.gmail.com
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
I guess you meant unrar-nonfree can probably be removed from Debian now that we have unrar-free? Definitely not, since unrar-free does not support the RAR format versions that unrar-nonfree or unar support. I suggest we can probably remove unrar-free and unrar-nonfree now that unar exists. unar doesn't support creating RAR format archives, so maybe rar needs to stay but personally I don't see much of a need for it. I was not aware of the unar's existence, thanks for pointing out. The main reason I decided to deal with unrar is because of e-book reader calibre needing the libunrar.so library [1] in order to read CBR files. Can unar provide such an interface? [1]: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=485492 Nick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CANn5kOtEoSNimc9u0fmhSetoFBLBZfBkXrYfGA2-rEJCarcX=w...@mail.gmail.com
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Nick Andrik wrote: The main reason I decided to deal with unrar is because of e-book reader calibre needing the libunrar.so library [1] in order to read CBR files. I see. Can unar provide such an interface? It is LGPL, so it could be made to provide such an interface but currently only provides a command-line interface. I would suggest adapting calibre to use it would be best. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6ep6lhkk_he-v0tvaoozxnduatibpnobbgfzs1xhp3...@mail.gmail.com
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 01:13:29PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: Le Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 05:35:07AM +0200, Nick Andrik a écrit : My problem was when I had to specify a license for the debian/* files. Hi, Not all Debian source packages contain license or copyright notices for the files in the debian directory. True. It is therefore not strictly required to specify a license. I don't see where such conclusion would come from. For the packages I maintain, I now refrain from doing so when the contents of the debian directory are trivial. I guess you don't bother to claim copyright for trivial debian/* files. When there is no copyright and license information for the debian/* files, then this can mean different things. It can mean that the Debian package maintainers find the work so small that they don't bother to claim copyright and choose a license. It can mean that they think obviously everything I do for Debian is DFSG-free, why would I need to repeat that in every copyright file. It can mean that the debian/* files become copyrighted by the upstream copyright holders, and then the license chosen by upstream applies. I haven't seen RC bugs about this so far, although one could argue that it's a policy violation, even making the package undistributable. I don't expect Debian to get legal problems with Debian package maintainers about the copyright of their work since these Debian package maintainers clearly contributed their work to Debian meant for free redistribution. It is in my opinion no big deal but still better to always mention the copyright and license information for the debian/* files for completeness and clarity. Back to Nick Andrik's question : The question is not about whether debian/* files must always have copyright and license information. He wants to add this information. The question is also not about the license terms of the GPL license itself. I'm sure the authors of the GPL meant the GPL to be free for use by anyone. Nick Andrik's question is about which license can be used for the debian/* files for this non-free package, since he got feedback that the GPL would not be compatible with the non-free license of this upstream software. I guess that http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license could be used. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110065057.ga17...@master.debian.org
Re: debian/* license of non-free packages
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 06:50:57AM +, Bart Martens wrote: For the packages I maintain, I now refrain from doing so when the contents of the debian directory are trivial. I guess you don't bother to claim copyright for trivial debian/* files. When there is no copyright and license information for the debian/* files, then this can mean different things. From my perspective according to DEP5 it can only mean one thing: The license is the same as specified in Files: * and you blame the copyright holder mentioned in this stanca as copyright holder also for debian/*. The latter is no problem for simple debian/* dirs and using the same license as the code seems to be reasonable anyway. Kind regards Andreas. -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130110074327.gb20...@an3as.eu
