On the license of python-debian for use as a library

[Florian Weimer]

* Philippe Ombredanne:

> 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.

I don't really see where this is coming from.  I do not see any
practical problems with a copyleft license for a Python script.
Compliance with the GPLv2+ terms is about as difficult as complying
with the MIT license, so why bother changing the licensing?

In any case, my contributions to python-debian were probably copied
from the Debian security tracker project, so you'd need to check what
exactly was copied from there and who contributed to the copied code
portion.