netpbm DFSG changes?

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2026-07-14 "Luke T. Shumaker" <lukeshu at lukeshu.com> wrote:
> 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.

I think the former two are false positives, both have been carrying this copyright/license header since the start of the  SVN repo:
./other/pamchannel.c ./converter/other/pamtopnm.c 

  By Bryan Henderson, San Jose CA 2000.08.05

  Contributed to the public domain by its author 2000.08.05.

cu Andreas