Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses?

From	Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.bugs.dist, linux.debian.devel, linux.debian.policy
Subject	Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses?
Date	2026-04-27 15:30 +0200
Message-ID	<MOuc9-NP8-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <MOtJ7-NnO-3@gated-at.bofh.it> <v1ZCh-6db-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <MOu2t-NLF-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <v1ZCh-6db-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <MOu2t-NLF-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 03:09:54PM +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> On Mon, 2026-04-27 at 14:52:41 +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > On Apr 27, Mechtilde Stehmann <mechtilde@debian.org> wrote:
> > > The issue at hand is the inclusion of additional license texts in the
> > > base-files package.
> 
> > I think that there was a consensus back then and there is still one now.
> > Do you volunteer to NMU base-files, if the maintainer is not
> > interested in working on this?
> 
> Uh, what? I'm pretty certain Santiago would be happy to update
> base-files *once* debian-policy has been updated, but certainly not
> before. So instead of unnecessarily throwing shade, perhaps get
> debian-policy updated first?

Indeed.

Here is a quote from base-files FAQ for those who never bothered to read it:

Q. Why isn't license "foo" included in common-licenses?

A. I delegate such decisions to the policy group. If you want to
propose a new license you should make a policy proposal to modify the
paragraph in policy saying "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), and the GNU FDL
(versions 1.2 or 1.3) should refer to the corresponding files under
/usr/share/common-licenses". The way of doing this is explained in the
debian-policy package. As usual, you should always take a look at
already reported bugs against debian-policy before submitting a new
one.

If somebody has a problem with me delegating the decision to the
policy group, they should say so in a clear and non ambiguous way.

Thanks.

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Thread

What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? Mechtilde Stehmann <mechtilde@debian.org> - 2026-04-27 10:10 +0200
  Re: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? "Andrea Pappacoda" <andrea@pappacoda.it> - 2026-04-27 10:50 +0200
    Re: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT> - 2026-04-27 15:00 +0200
      Re: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> - 2026-04-27 15:20 +0200
        Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org> - 2026-04-27 15:30 +0200
          Re: Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in  /usr/share/common-licenses? Mechtilde Stehmann <mechtilde@debian.org> - 2026-04-27 17:30 +0200
          Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT> - 2026-04-28 11:50 +0200
  Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses? Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2026-04-27 18:50 +0200

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