license for n-g-d debian/module/debian/patches/*

[Russ Allbery]

Andreas Beckmann <anbe at debian.org> writes:

> I just remembered the debian-devel thread "debian/* license of non-free
> packages" in January
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/01/msg00193.html

> There are a few trivial patches from me in
> debian/module/debian/patches/* that are currently covered in
> debian/copyright by

> Files: debian/*
> License: GPL2+

> which does not sound entirely right.
> Just to be on the safe side, I'd like to use a very permissive license
> for the stuff I put in there - do you have any suggestions? I won't mind
> upstream taking any of my changes, incorporating them and releasing them
> under their non-free license without any restrictions.

I use:

Files: debian/*
License: Expat
 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
 copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
 "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
 without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
 distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit
 persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the
 following conditions:
 .
 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
 in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 .
 THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
 MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
 IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
 CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT
 OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR
 THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

for most cases myself.  This does require preservation of the copyright
notice, however.  I also sometimes use:

Files: debian/*
Copyright: no copyright notice, see License
License: rra-public-domain
 The authors hereby relinquish any claim to any copyright that they may
 have in this work, whether granted under contract or by operation of law
 or international treaty, and hereby commit to the public, at large, that
 they shall not, at any time in the future, seek to enforce any copyright
 in this work against any person or entity, or prevent any person or
 entity from copying, publishing, distributing or creating derivative
 works of this work.

which is wording recommended by IETF lawyers a long time ago for people
who wanted to put RFC contributions into the public domain (it basically
works via estoppel), but it's not heavily tested and there's some debate
over whether it's actually effective.  In particular, it's not clear what
it does in moral rights countries (which the US is not).  But it's
maximally permissive.

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