Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 12:08:04PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>Would you (the plural you - all those responding so far, and everyone
>reading this who has voting power in Debian) prefer that Debian
>considered "too-strictly-free" packaging a release-critical bug and
>reason for rejection in NEW queue screening?

I would prefer to not spend time on this, life is too short and we are 
already spending too much time on licensing-related minutes.

Also "a release-critical bug" and "reason for rejection in NEW queue 
screening" don't necessarily go together.

>Imagine a proposal was made to extend Debian Policy with a rule, that
>packaging must be upstreamable - i.e. that packages licensed more
>strictly free than that of the contained project must be *rejected* at
>the NEW queue screening, and packages already in the archive with such
>"too strictly free" licensing should¹ be either corrected or dropped.
>
>Would you vote for or against such a proposal?

I wouldn't vote for one that requires NEW rejection. I may vote for it 
being an RC bug but fixing those in existing packages where the original 
copyright holder may be unavailable or unwilling to relicense it may 
usually be impossible (and also useless if it's not copyrightable?).


-- 
WBR, wRAR

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