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Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

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Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> writes:

> Related to that, I now (since yesterday) add the following section to
> the debian/copyright file of packages that I maintain:

> Files: debian/patches/*
> Copyright: None
> License: None
> Comment:
>  Patches are generally assumed not copyright-protected by default.
>  Please list any patch with copyright claims separately.

So far as I understand current coypright case law, the first sentence is
factually incorrect as stated. I'm not sure that matters, since presumably
it should be read as a statement of your beliefs, and even if those
beliefs are not legally correct, they probably could be argued to
constitute some type of promissary estoppel against you ever making a
copyright claim for the content of the patches. But it does leave things
in a somewhat ambiguous place.

For work that you don't think is or should be protected by copyright at
all, I don't understand why you're uncomfortable with adding a simple
license to reassure those people who don't agree with you. For work where
I think making a coypright claim would just be silly, I use the Free
Software Foundation all-permissive license, just to remove any doubt or
ambiguity.

    Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
    are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
    notice and this notice are preserved. This file is offered as-is,
    without any warranty.

This is a little bit annoying since it still requires preservation of a
copyright notice, but I didn't want to make up my own license.

You could use something like CC0 instead, of course, and that would
probably be more formally correct. I am stubbornly annoyed by using long
and complicated licenses like the CC0 to express very simple concepts,
even if I understand why lawyers feel like they have to write them, and
therefore am not inclined to use them myself if there's soemthing
reasonable that can be expressed in four lines but has still been looked
at by an actual lawyer.

> In what you quote, I can see how "an executable work" can affect the
> licensing of directly related "scripts used to control [it]", but not
> the other way around.

> I.e. I can only read the quote as saying, that a strongly licensed work
> cannot be weakened by weaker licensed helper tools. I am unable to read
> it as saying that stronger licensed helper tools affect the licensing
> of what they help getting built.

I'm inclined to agree with this, but of course I'm not a lawyer and this
is not legal advice.

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

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Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.ballabio@gmail.com> - 2026-02-02 13:50 +0100
  Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2026-02-02 14:40 +0100
    Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 16:20 +0100
      Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Ansgar 🙀 <ansgar@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 17:10 +0100
        Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2026-02-02 20:10 +0100
          Is Packaging Copyrightable (was: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?) Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 20:20 +0100
            Re: Is Packaging Copyrightable (was: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?) Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2026-02-03 15:10 +0100
              Re: Is Packaging Copyrightable (was: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?) Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-02-03 18:00 +0100
          Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2026-02-02 21:50 +0100
            Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2026-02-03 15:10 +0100
              Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2026-02-03 23:30 +0100
                Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2026-02-04 00:00 +0100
                Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> - 2026-02-04 00:20 +0100
                Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2026-02-04 02:40 +0100
                Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> - 2026-02-04 19:00 +0100
    Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian? thomas@goirand.fr - 2026-02-02 20:20 +0100

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