netpbm DFSG changes?

[Luke T. Shumaker]

Hi all,

For decades, Debian had removed several programs from netpbm because
their copyright holder / license were unknown.  Quoting the old
`debian/copyright` file:

> UNKNOWN, SO NOT DISTRIBUTED:
> 
> The following programs are in the upstream source package, but do not
> have sufficient copyright and license information to be redistributed:
> 
> pamchannel:  No copyright / license text found
> pamtopnm:    No copyright / license text found
> pbmto4425:   No copyright / license text found
> pbmtoln03:   No copyright / license text found
> pbmtolps:    No copyright / license text found
> pbmtopk:     No copyright / license text found
> pktopbm:     No copyright / license text found
> ppmtopjxl:   No copyright / license text found
> spottopgm:   No copyright / license text found

(Of those, I believe that pamchannel and pamtopnm were erroneously
included in the list; but that the others are indeed not safe to
distribute.  Most of them have authorship information, but no license;
while pbmto4425 has no authorship information either.)

However, when updating to netpbm 10.78 in 2020
(https://salsa.debian.org/debian-phototools-team/netpbm/-/commit/fe0f4f186ace57995f9e0fd3d4c1da422c0c7457)
(included in Bookworm and later), these programs were re-added.

Looking at pbmto4425, pbmtoln03, and pbmtolps, I neither see updated
information in these files nor them being adequately addressed in the
current `debian/copyright` file.

Was there a discussion concluding that these programs are actually
DFSG-compliant, or was their re-addition an oversight?

Several other distros, including Parabola and Guix had been following
Debian's lead and removing those programs.

-- 
Happy hacking,
~ Luke T. Shumaker
  Parabola GNU/Linux-libre