Re: RFC: DEP-3: Patch Tagging Guidelines
Le Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 12:40:01PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > The dh_make template for debian/copyright induces many developers to put their
> > packaging work under the GPL, and I have already seen packages whose license is
> > otherwise BSD-ish with such patches. If the maintainer suddenly goes MIA and
> > the patch is non-trivial, then in theory if we want to respect what is written,
> > we are stuck with a GPL'ed patch. Therefore, we have an optional License field
> > to make things crystal clear if necessary.
>
> I have no opposition against an optional License field. Can you try to word a
> description for it?
>
> On the other side, I'm also not convinced it's really useful... if a patch
> author wants some specific licence different from upstream's license, he
> should make that explicit in the patch itself when he adds his own
> copyright notice.
Hi Raphaël,
if it is obvious for everybody that any patch for a given file is implicitely
licensed under the same license as the file, then the License: field is not
necessary. This of course makes people releasing some code under non-free terms
when they prepare a patch for non-free packages for instance, which in case of
a significant contribution could potentially be an obstacle to a relicensing to
a free license if the patch is accepted upstream and author can not be reached
later. But this is a corner case that can be resolved with a comment in the
patch or by other means.
At your option, here is nevertheless a description.
License (optional): indicates the license under which the patch is released.
Note that trivial works are anyway not copyrightable, and that in the vast
majority of the cases it is expected that the patch is released under the same
terms as the files it applies to. Nevertheless, you can use this field to
clarify ambiguous situations, for instance when the license of the packaging
work is not the same as the packaged program, or when you would like to give
permission to the upstream copyright holder(s) to relicense the patched work
later (in case the current license is problematic).
PS: I also prefer Reviewed-by to Signed-off.
Have a nice week-end,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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