[Pkg-giraffe-discuss] z-push packaging question - licenses / lintian

[Guido Günther]

On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 05:00:50PM +0100, Roel van Meer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> so, based on Carstens work I've started the z-push packaging. I've updated
> the repo to 2.3.4, renamed the source package to z-push, and we're also in
> Travis CI now: https://travis-ci.org/roelvanmeer/z-push-packaging
> 
> The build shows some lintian errors and warnings, most of which I'll be able
> to fix, but for one of them I have a question.
> 
> Lintian complains about an error in the source package:
> 
>  E: z-push source: license-problem-bad-php-license debian/copyright
> 
> The problem is that a number of PHP files (derived from Pear files) are
> listed in the copyright file as having the PHP-2.02 license, and according
> to Lintian this license is only valid for the PHP interpreter itself, not
> for code written in PHP, nor for Pear modules. The specification of this
> license is correct, however, as this license is indeed named in the PHP
> files themselves.
> 
> Now, when I look at official Debian packages that provide the original
> version of these files, then the files themselves also mention the PHP-2.02
> license, but the d/copyright file lists them under a different license
> (BSD-3-clause, or PHP 3.01).

"original version" sounds as if these were embedded code copies. If so
you can just drop them from the upstream tarball (adding a +dfsg to the
version number). This is also much better from a security pov.

Cheers,
 -- Guido