On the license of python-debian for use as a library
Philippe Ombredanne
pombredanne at nexb.com
Tue Aug 13 15:32:26 BST 2019
A while back, I started a thread to discuss the license of
python-debian on the now defunct pkg-python-debian-discuss list. [1]
Back then, dann frazier, Enrico Zini, Reinhard Tartler and Stuart
Prescott all replied they were OK with a license change.
There are still quite a few copyright holders and contributors that I
need to reach out to!
I am trying to complete this now so here is my question:
If you are a copyright holder in python-debian, would you agree to a
relicensing such that it can be used as a library for projects using a
permissive, non-GPL license?
Background/original message
=======================
python-debian is the canonical library to handle debian files. It is
GPL-licensed yet also used as a library by quite a few tools [2] that
are not GPL-licensed but rather ISC, MIT, Apache and similar both at
debian and elsewhere.
Would the copyleft of python-debian flow to a tool or library that is
calling and using python-debian as a library?
If yes, could it make sense to consider some sorts of licensing update
either for all these FOSS libraries or rather for python-debian proper
such that the effective licensing of these tools may not be impacted?
PS: I am maintaining origin and license code scanning tools written in
Python [3] and I am considering to add a dependency on python-debian to
export valid machine readable copyright files created from a scancode
license and copyright file [4]. The licensed toolkit is Apache-licensed.
And the TODO for me: these are the contributors that still need to be
contacted.
A. main contributors
===============
The following individuals have not replied to the original email.
Based on a gitstats run [5] they have contributed 10 lines of code or
more, in order of decreasing contribution size:
- John Wright <jsw at debian.org>
- James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net>
- Stefano Zacchiroli <zack at debian.org>
- Filippo Giunchedi <filippo at debian.org>
- Colin Watson <cjwatson at canonical.com>
- Adeodato Simó <dato at net.com.org.es>
- Tshepang Lekhonkhobe <tshepang at gmail.com>
- Ville Skyttä <ville.skytta at iki.fi>
- Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at jelmer.uk>
I will reach out to them off list directly (asking them for an on-list
reply). (See the table below in D. for the full list of contributors)
B. dpkg contributors
====================
In changelog.py we have this notice:
# The parsing code is based on that from dpkg which is:
# Copyright 1996 Ian Jackson
# Copyright 2005 Frank Lichtenheld <frank at lichtenheld.de>
# and licensed under the same license as above.
I will be reaching out offlist to two:
- Ian Jackson <ian at chiark.greenend.org.uk>
- Frank Lichtenheld <frank at lichtenheld.de> or <djpig at debian.org>
C. Other contributors
=====================
These other individuals have contributed a few lines either through a
commit or a patch acknowledged in a commit message and/or a changelog
entry. I do not think we need their OK for a license change. I can
reach out to them too if you think this is important, but I am not
planning to for now: if you are one of these, your ack on list would
be much welcomed in any case!
With an email attached to their name in the log or commit:
- Ben Finney <bignose at debian.org>
- Chris Lamb <lamby at debian.org>
- Fathi Boudra <fabo at debian.org>
- Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de>
- Gerhard Poul <gerhard.poul at gmail.com>
- Guillem Jover <guillem at debian.org>
- Jan Teske <jteske at posteo.net>
- Jonny Lamb <jonnylamb at jonnylamb.com>
- Julian Andres Klode <jak at debian.org>
- Matthieu Caneill <matt at brokenwa.re>
- Maximiliano Curia <maxy at debian.org>
- Ole Streicher <ole at aip.de>
- Philipp Hahn <hahn at univention.de>
- Stefano Rivera <stefanor at debian.org>
- Steve Kowalik <stevenk at debian.org>
Without an email attached to their name:
- Alexandre Fayolle
- Barry Warsaw
- Mika Eloranta
- Muharem Hrnjadovic
- Neil Williams
- Piotr Ożarowski
- Romain Francoise
- Tilman Koschnick
D. Main contributors
====================
Here is a subset of the gitstats [5] output with the number of
commits, added and removed lines:
Author Commits (%) +lines -lines
=======================================================
Stuart Prescott 187 (31.75%) 33635 20383
John Wright 120 (20.37%) 8434 4536
James Westby 67 (11.38%) 5691 1633
Stefano Zacchiroli 86 (14.60%) 5623 1952
Filippo Giunchedi 24 (4.07%) 3203 2679
Enrico Zini 24 (4.07%) 1103 377
Colin Watson 34 (5.77%) 939 550
Adeodato Simó 20 (3.40%) 162 170
Reinhard Tartler 8 (1.36%) 113 25
Tshepang Lekhonkhobe 1 (0.17%) 59 19
Ville Skyttä 2 (0.34%) 36 36
Jelmer Vernooij 2 (0.34%) 7 2
Jelmer Vernooij 2 (0.34%) 4 3
Stefano Rivera 1 (0.17%) 6 2
Ole Streicher 1 (0.17%) 5 0
Matthieu Caneill 1 (0.17%) 5 5
Jan Teske 1 (0.17%) 4 10
Ben Finney 3 (0.51%) 4 2
Guillem Jover 2 (0.34%) 3 3
Jonny Lamb 1 (0.17%) 1 0
[1]: https://alioth-lists-archive.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-python-debian-discuss/2017-March/thread.html
[2]: Some examples:
https://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/decopy.git/ is ISC licensed
https://github.com/xolox/python-deb-pkg-tools is MIT licensed
https://github.com/jwodder/aptrepo is MIT licensed
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pet/pet3.git/ seems to be ISC licensed
https://github.com/sassoftware/python-debpkgr is Apache licensed
[3]: https://github.com/nexB/
[4]: https://github.com/nexB/scancode-toolkit
[5]: https://github.com/hoxu/gitstats
--
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne
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