Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

Andrey Rakhmatullin <[email protected]> Mon, 2 Feb 2026 19:27:06 +0500

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

On Mon, Feb 02, 2026 at 02:24:40PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> If the packaging and the upstream source have different licenses, I
>> wonder what is the license on the resulting package -- both source and
>> binary?
>
>Some projects in Debian already without problems involve multiple
>licenses, e.g. one license for code to be compiled together, maybe
>another for components linkable with independently compiled code, and
>maybe a third for some documentation.

But can you say that debian/rules and other packaging are also separate 
components which the binary package is not a derivative work of?

I understand that this is closer to debian-legal@ (or what I've heard of 
it) than to real world, but this whole discussion is not hugely important 
for the real world...

>
>I am not talking about is copyleft-licensing something which is patched
>into upstream-licensed code and therefore causing Debian to
>redistribute upstream works relicensed compared to their own licensing.

It wasn't clear that you explicitly exclude debian/patches/ from the 
discussion and your questions. You even mentioned that "Sometimes I 
proactively license patches potential for upstream adoption
same as upstream, but generally I don't".

-- 
WBR, wRAR

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