Bug#1135097: Please extent list of licenses named in chapter 12.5

Sean Whitton <[email protected]> Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:09:31 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.policy
Message-ID	<87340ftpro.fsf__11111.9144175731$1777367968$gmane$org@zephyr.silentflame.com>

Simon Josefsson [28/Apr 10:08am +02] wrote:
> New concrete proposal, based on your proposal and 1) turn it into a
> list, 2) dropping NIV.  Thoughts on this version?  Attaching diff-style
> patch too if this is easier for review.
>
> /Simon
>
> Policy 12.5
>
> OLD:
>
> Packages distributed under the Apache license (version 2.0), the
> Artistic license, the Creative Commons CC0-1.0 license, the GNU GPL
> (versions 1, 2, or 3), the GNU LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), the GNU FDL
> (versions 1.2 or 1.3), and the Mozilla Public License (version 1.1 or
> 2.0) should refer to the corresponding files under
> /usr/share/common-licenses, (footnote 9) rather than quoting them in the
> copyright file.
>
> NEW:
>
> Packages distributed under the any of the following licenses should
> refer to the corresponding files under /usr/share/common-licenses,
> (footnote 9) rather than quoting them in the copyright file.
>
> - Apache License (version 2.0),
> - Artistic license (versions 1.0 or 2.0)
> - Boost Software License Version 1.0
> - Creative Commons CC0-1.0 license
> - Creative Commons CC-BY (version 3.0 or 4.0)
> - Creative Commons CC-BY-SA (version 3.0 or 4.0)
> - GNU Affero General Public License (AGPLv3)
> - GNU GPL (versions 1, 2, or 3)
> - GNU LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3)
> - GNU FDL (versions 1.2 or 1.3)
> - Mozilla Public License (version 1.1 or 2.0)
> - SIL Open Font License (version 1.1)

There is a systematic way we handle this: it has to be shown that the
license text is so common that deduplicating it in this way will save
disk space on the vast majority of Debian systems.  I doubt that all
those licenses meet that criterion.

Also generally the change to the base-files package takes place before
Policy.  The base-files maintainer is more important than the Policy
Editors for these decisions.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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