Re: is copyleft packaging bad for Debian?

Jeremy Stanley <[email protected]> Wed, 4 Feb 2026 17:48:14 +0000

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

On 2026-02-03 15:40:58 -0800 (-0800), Russ Allbery wrote:
[...]
> This is a really good point. I did not think about patent licenses, but 
> indeed those are a completely different problem with different tradeoffs.

And to be clear, this isn't a niche challenge. There are, for 
example, patent clauses in Apache Software License v2 and GNU Public 
License v3, extremely popular choices on both sides of the 
permissive vs copyleft aisles.

> For example, I suspect one of the most common failure modes, legally, of 
> the standard community assumption about free software licensing is when 
> someone submits a patch on employer time without getting explicit 
> permission from their employer to release the work as free software. 
> Depending on local laws, work contracts, etc., that patch may be owned by 
> their employer under work-for-hire laws and the person submitting it may 
> have no legal right to agree to anything regarding it.
[...]

Right, this is precisely why (from what I understand) Apache 
Software Foundation counsel had them impose a CLA on participants in 
their projects, and subsequent non-ASF projects reusing their 
license followed suit. Inbound=outbound is a fairly comfortable 
assumption when it comes to copyright, but patent grants are an 
entirely different kettle of fish.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley

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