On the license of python-debian for use as a library

[Philippe Ombredanne]

Hi Ben:

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 12:37 AM Ben Finney <bignose at debian.org> wrote:
> On 13-Aug-2019, Philippe Ombredanne wrote:
> > And I made another mistake: Ben Finney <bignose at debian.org> is also
> > a copyright holder.
>
> Thanks for getting in contact.
>
> > You input is welcomed.
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 4:32 PM Philippe Ombredanne
> > <pombredanne at nexb.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > […]
> > > If you are a copyright holder in python-debian, would you agree to
> > > a relicensing such that it can be used as a library for projects
> > > using a permissive, non-GPL license?
>
> I do not agree to any license change away from strong copyleft.
>
> The GPL expresses my intended license for the code: that includes the
> permission to derive from it free works, but not non-free works.
>
> This is unaffected by whether the work is used as a library. GNU GPL
> is a very good license for library code, because it encourages work
> built on that code to also respect user freedoms by keeping all
> derived works free.
>
> I believe this was correctly understood by the original copyright
> holders of the code in this library, when they deliberately chose to
> release the work under GNU GPL. Regardless, I agree with that
> license's restrictions today.
>
> Weakening the copyleft to allow non-free software to link with this is
> not permitted. I respectfully decline the request.

Thank you for the quick reply and your interest in strong copyleft.
If I am not mistaken your contribution to python-debian seems to be
limited to one function (8 lines of code excluding comments and
documentation) .

This was added by Stefano about 10 years ago in this commit [1]
Is this correct?

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/python-debian-team/python-debian/blob/bc28396d79cde02186ea2a3cb3f5bd65e316bfe1/debian_bundle/deprecation.py

--
Cordially

Philippe Ombredanne