Re: Guidance Needed on Licensing for a Debian Package

Francesco Poli <[email protected]> Tue, 11 Mar 2025 10:13:27 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Mon, 10 Mar 2025 23:26:25 +0100 (CET) Raul G wrote:

[...]
> Link to the copyright text: https://paste.debian.net/1362371/
[...]

I see the following:

[...]
| Files: Ukranian/*
| Copyright: 2014, Sergiy Tkachenko / 4th february
| License: CC-BY-ND-4
[...]

My own personal opinion about Creative Commons licenses is that they
are all non-free (with the only exception of CC0 and, possibly, of
CC-by-sa-v4.0, due to its one-way compatibility with GPLv3).

Unfortunately, Debian ftp masters disagree with me and accept
CC-by-sa-v3.0, CC-by-sa-v4.0, CC-by-v3.0, and CC-by-v4.0 into Debian
main.

Anyway, CC-by-nd-v4.0 is definitely unable to meet the DFSG.

Hence, if your package is intended for Debian main, I think you should
try one of the following strategies:

 a) try to get in touch with the copyright holder of the
    CC-by-nd-v4.0-licensed font and persuade him to re-license the font
    under DFSG-free terms (for instance under the Expat/MIT license, or
    under the GPLv3 license with font exception)

 b) drop the CC-by-nd-v4.0-licensed font from the Debian package


I hope this helps.


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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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