Bug#883731: audacious: Debian packaging has incorrect license

[John Lindgren]

Nicholas D Steeves wrote:

> Both BSD 3-clause and BSD 2-clause allow relicensing as GPL, thus so
> long as the licensing terms are complied with correctly BSD code can
> perpetually and unidirectionally flow to GPL projects.

Yes, I agree.  It's perfectly okay for the Debian package(s) to be
distributed as GPL, *as long as* the original BSD license text is still
retained.

> I'm also unsure whether the patch
> that changes the user-visible bits and the out-of-date
> debian/copyright outweigh the 2-clause license that wasn't stripped
> from the headers of various files.

Speaking for myself as upstream project lead, I'm not worried about
the legal status of already-built packages, but I would prefer that the
upstream (BSD 2-clause) license remain user-visible in future Debian
builds.  The simplest way to achieve this would be to remove
use-system-licenses.patch and let the GUI again display
/usr/share/audacious/COPYING as the upstream version does.

Alternatively, debian/copyright could be updated to include the full
text of the upstream license, plus any Debian-specific bits (packaging
copyrights, etc.), and the patch could be updated so that the GUI
displays the installed version of that file instead (I think that would
be /usr/share/doc/audacious/copyright?)

Francesco Poli wrote:

> The Audacious upstream developers may be willing to help, by clarifying
> any doubts upon request.

Yes, for sure.

> If that is deemed to be needed or useful, it could be feasible to also
> fix the debian/copyright file for audacious version 3.7.2 in a Debian
> stable update (and possibly also address the same issue for
> oldstable)... On the other hand, this extra effort could perhaps be
> considered not worth doing.

For my part, I'm not worried about the stable+oldstable packages being
fixed, only that the problem is resolved in a new unstable upload going
forward.  I think that the other upstream developers would agree.

Thank you both for the prompt reply and good discussion!

John