Re: no licenses are granted + BSD-3-clause

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:58:23 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<2559519.iZASKD2KPV@soren-desktop>

On Tuesday, December 9, 2025 3:40:48 PM Mountain Standard Time Jérémy Lal 
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I came across what follows.
> It's not clear to me how the concatenation of that text + BSD-3-clause
> gives a whole that isn't DFSG.
> 
> The Source Map Tests suite ("Software") is protected by copyright and is
> being made available under the  "BSD License", included below. This
> Software may be subject to third party rights (rights from parties other
> than Ecma International), including patent rights, and no licenses under
> such third party rights are granted under this license even if the third
> party concerned is a member of Ecma International. SEE THE ECMA CODE OF
> CONDUCT IN PATENT MATTERS AVAILABLE AT
> https://www.ecma-international.org/ipr FOR INFORMATION REGARDING THE
> LICENSING OF PATENT CLAIMS THAT ARE REQUIRED TO IMPLEMENT ECMA
> INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS*.
> 
> Copyright (c) 2024, Ecma International
> All rights reserved.
> 
> (here follows a standard BSD-3-clause license follows).

Without any background for context, the above information applies to every 
package in Debian, even though it isn’t explicitly stated.  Basically they are 
saying:  We are releasing this software under the BSD.  Other people may have 
patents that they claim cover this software.  We can’t do anything about that.

Any third party can claim they have a patent over any software in Debian.  It 
usually doesn’t become an issue unless some judicial officer accepts their 
claim and rules that the open-source software must be taken offline.

> Without better advice, I will "dfsg-exclude" the files.

I don’t see any reason we would need to exclude these files unless there is 
some information indicating that we can’t distribute them, like a court case 
establishing that someone does indeed have patent control over these files.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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