Bug#1135097: Bug#885698: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses?

[ trimming Cc lines a little bit, I will read replies from the lists ]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 01:15:35PM +0100, Peter Blackman wrote:
> Could common-licenses directory be compressed?
> That would save a lot of space.
> 
> common-licenses is 295k on my system,
> but the whole of base files (compressed package) is only 73k

Ok, let's make some kind of declaration here:

The base-files package has not had any new license added in a lot of
years, while the rest of the system has continued to grow exponentially,
as usual. Note that I'm using the word "exponentially" here in the pure
mathematical sense, not in the English sense that "it grows too much".

Most licenses are not really large files by today's standards.

To be consistent, compressing licenses would force all references to
be changed to the compressed version, IMO for very little gain.

I'm more concerned about people copying and pasting the same licenses
over and over again into debian/copyright, as pointed out by Mechtilde.

Therefore, please do not worry about the increased size in the
installed size of base-files after this proposal is approved.
I think we definitely can afford it.

Thanks.