Bug#1135657: bmagic: DFSG Issues

>On Mon, 15 Jun 2026 16:55:11 +0300 Adrian Bunk wrote:
>
>> 4-clause BSD with the advertising clause has always been recognized
>> as DFSG-free (and is also listed at [1]):
>>
>>   All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
>>   software must display the following acknowledgement: This product
>>   includes software developed by the <copyright holder>.

Le Tue, Jun 16, 2026 at 12:07:07AM +0200, Francesco Poli a =E9crit :
>
>Yes, although it is obnoxious, deprecated, problematic and
>almost everywhere recommended against, it has been traditionally
>considered acceptable with respect to the DFSG.

I searched for "All advertising materials mentioning features" in the
Debian sources and it looks like the number of different copyright
holders for which we accepted software under the 4-clause BSD may
be not so large.

So maybe the DFSG team could decide that we gave an exception to the
DFSG to these copyright holders only, that we note that it pushes on our
users the duty to check the copyright file of every package they use in
case they want to mention them in advertisements, and that because this
is too unreasonable we will not grant exceptions anymore to new
packages, for the 4-clause BSD and for any other similar license?

We could also make a Lintian tag that asks the maintainer to make a
comment in debian/copyright for UCSC Berkeley-licensed code that the
advertisement clause has been revoked on January 31st 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#3-clause_license_(%22BSD_License=
_2.0%22,_%22Revised_BSD_License%22,_%22New_BSD_License%22,_or_%22Modified_B=
SD_License%22)

Lastly we could ask politely to the other copyright holders if they were
willing to make the same change.

Have a nice day,

Charles

-- =

Charles Plessy                         Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
Debian Med packaging team         http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tooting from work,               https://fediscience.org/@charles_plessy
Tooting from home,                 https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy

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