[Pkg-phototools-devel] On poking upstreams about copyright/license matters

[Cyril Brulebois]

Hi folks,

I'd like to get your views on the following topic. Let's suppose that a
package got previously ACCEPTED into the archive, but with a rather
monolithic “package is licensed under $foo's term” copyright file.

But then, while writing a complete copyright file, with all copyright
holders and license texts, it appears that some files lack a proper
license statement (like say “license: gpl”), or proper copyright
notices.

Or that some files are even non-free (in the sense of the classical “you
might use this file with no restriction”, but neither modification or
redistribution are explicitly allowed).


In those cases, it looks to me that the intent of being free is quite
clear, and that there's no strong problem, like a stupid patent, or a
wanted-to-be-proprietary license. And since the package is already in
the archive, it looks like no regression to me to upload the updated
packages, while upstream is being notified of the possible problems, so
that those problematic parts get clarified.

On the other hand, we're talking about uploading not 100%-DFSG-free
content, but it would feel a bit hard to request the removal of the
current package until all bits are clarified upstream.


There are also some parts that might not have any copyright/license, but
one then can assume that the global/package-wide terms apply.

For a concrete example, see libgphoto2's debian/copyright (unstable
branch in git), look for “NONE”, “TODO”, and “DFSG” tokens.

I've also been postponing uploading hugin for similar reasons (I was
thinking of an svn snapshot, which would be in all cases way better than
the current oudated version), but maybe I should just go ahead?

Comments welcome.

Mraw,
KiBi.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-phototools-devel/attachments/20080511/42b6a25d/attachment.pgp