Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

Andrey Rakhmatullin <[email protected]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:19:33 +0500

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.project
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 02:04:44PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>Hi dear fellow Debian developers,
>
>When I package a project for inclusion into Debian, I commonly license
>my packaging work using a copyleft license¹.
>
>I appreciate that upstream authors may have reasons to choose different
>licensing, and am open to relicense non-packaging parts (e.g. patches).
>Sometimes I proactively license patches potential for upstream adoption
>same as upstream, but generally I don't - patches are often arguably
>too small to be copyright-protected, or might contain contributions
>from multiple authors - in short, it is simpler for me to ensure that
>the packaging parts are all DFSG-free than that they are all compliant
>with upstream choice of licensing, and I see no need for the packaging
>part to be compliant with upstream choice of licensing.
>
>My question here is: Am I doing a disservice to Debian? 

*shrug*

I haven't been in situations where this matters, but I may have seen 
discussions of those a couple of times.

It's certainly one of those things that may force people to spend more 
time and brain power on such packaging in various situations though.

>Do Debian already have a Policy about this?

No, but AFAIK the project consensus is "a simple permissive license or the 
same license as the upstream; but also maybe the license doesn't matter 
because it's not copyrightable".

> If not, should we add one?

"You must license your packaging under these licenses" seems unusual to me 
as a written policy, but maybe it's fine.

-- 
WBR, wRAR

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