Re: Need advice: Package has a restrictive non-free modified MIT license

Aryan Karamtoth <[email protected]> Mon, 21 Jul 2025 21:20:58 +0530

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Message-ID	<PUZPR04MB6382FCFB8F945E838CC02F13D35DA@PUZPR04MB6382.apcprd04.prod.outlook.com>

On 21-07-2025 16:32, Maytham Alsudany wrote:
> Hi Aryan,
>
> On Mon, 2025-07-21 at 07:24 +0530, Aryan Karamtoth wrote:
>> The exact restrictive policy of the license is given below:
>> "Human protect patch:
>>   The program and its derivative work will neither be modified or
>> executed to harm any human being nor through
>>   inaction permit any human being to be harmed."
> This undoubtedly makes the license and by extension the software non-
> free.
>
> [...]
>> Hence, this is an important package that needs to be in Debian.
>> I need advice on how to proceed with this package as its a very
>> important one and the downstream packages of this upstream package are
>> very useful tools that need to be in Debian.
> I see you've already asked the author to reconsider, which is a good
> first step.
>
> v1.0.0 is the last version that uses the Expat (MIT) license unmodified
> and is therefore free, so you can package that version of itertree
> without issue and upload to main (though you won't be able to update it
> further). You might have to adapt rdeps or patch it to be suitable
> though.
>
> --
> Maytham
>
> IANAL

Yes, I'm hoping me and the author can come to a conclusion about this. I 
noticed that the downstream package only uses it for tests hence I 
temporarily excluded those tests. It's not really a very important 
package now but if the author can reconsider their license decision, 
I'll proceed with the packaging.

Yes, the v1.0.0 might be packaged but I do not see any value in it as I 
don't feel to go against the author's wish and like you said, it won't 
be updated further.

I was also suggested by people on debian-mentors to consider adding it 
to non-free sources but it wouldn't make any sense for a python library 
to be a non-free package when the sole purpose of it is to be used by 
other dependent packages which might be free.

-- 
Regards,

Aryan Karamtoth
Debian Contributor
IRC: SpaciousCoder78

GPG Fingerprint: 7A7D 9308 2BD1 9BAF A83B 7E34 FE90 07B8 ED64 0421

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