Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

From	Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.project
Subject	Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?
Date	2026-01-31 20:00 +0100
Message-ID	<Mjoml-eLb7-3@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	<MiXYR-etP8-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	The Eyrie

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Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> writes:

> I appreciate that upstream authors may have reasons to choose different
> licensing, and am open to relicense non-packaging parts (e.g. patches).

I think the patches are the important part. In that specific case, if the
upstream code is under a permissive non-copyleft license, I think it would
be highly surprising to our users if your patches were under a copyleft
license, thus effectively changing the license of the binary package to a
copyleft license.

Users are not going to expect that Debian is going to change the licensing
of some package, particularly a well-known package, from, say, MIT to
GPLv3. They are very, very likely to not check the debian/copyright file
if they know the upstream license via upstream, and will just assume the
Debian package is covered by the same terms under which upstream released
their code. I think that if we did something to violate that assumption,
it would be rather rude, even though it's often a legally permissible
thing for us to do.

If you're talking about just the Debian packaging files and you don't
believe that affects the license of the resulting binaries (particularly
for libraries and the like where they are often used as part of derived
works), I don't think it matters what license you use as long as it's
DFSG-free. I've encountered Debian packages like that before, where
upstream is covered by a permissive non-copyleft license but the Debian
packaging files (rules, etc.) are covered by the GPL. It's a little
surprising but I can't think of any concrete problem it creates.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)              <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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Thread

is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2026-01-30 15:50 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Matthias Geiger <werdahias@riseup.net> - 2026-01-30 17:40 +0100
    Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Martin <debacle@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 12:30 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-01-30 17:40 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2026-01-30 17:40 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Arto Jantunen <viiru@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 10:40 +0100
    Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2026-01-31 12:30 +0100
      Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 12:50 +0100
      Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Matthias Geiger <werdahias@riseup.net> - 2026-01-31 17:30 +0100
      Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Mechtilde Stehmann <mechtilde@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 18:00 +0100
      Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no> - 2026-01-31 20:50 +0100
        Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2026-02-02 16:20 +0100
          Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? "Andrea Pappacoda" <andrea@pappacoda.it> - 2026-02-03 15:10 +0100
          Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> - 2026-02-04 10:50 +0100
            Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-02-04 18:30 +0100
    Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? "Andrea Pappacoda" <tachi@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 17:10 +0100
    Is Packaging Copyrightable (was: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?) Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 20:10 +0100
      Re: Is Packaging Copyrightable Martin <debacle@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 21:50 +0100
        as any other metadata + code expression  Question: Is Packaging Copyrightable Yaroslav Halchenko <yoh@debian.org> - 2026-02-03 00:30 +0100
      Re: Is Packaging Copyrightable Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no> - 2026-02-02 23:00 +0100
        Re: Is Packaging Copyrightable Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 23:40 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Antoine Le Gonidec <vv221@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 17:40 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2026-01-31 20:00 +0100

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