Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:45:07 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.project
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<10532957.CDJkKcVGEf@soren-desktop>

On Friday, January 30, 2026 6:04:44 AM Mountain Standard Time Jonas Smedegaard 
wrote:
> 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.

I think it is generally best for the debian/* licensing to match the upstream 
licensing.  Unless there is some compelling reason why it should be different 
(so far, I have never come across an example of such a reason), I think it 
should be the default behavior for Debian packaging.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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