Re: GPL for package under MIT license upstream; repack?
On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 09:30:38PM +0200, Gard Spreemann wrote:
> Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
> > On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 10:41:07AM +0200, Gard Spreemann wrote:
> >> A package I maintain (src:gudhi) was mostly under GPL-3+ up to and
> >> including the current version in the archives. Since then, upstream has
> >> switched to an MIT license, but with the caveat that many parts of the
> >> code has GPL dependencies and that "for practical purposes this code is
> >> GPL-3 for the user" [1].
> >>
> >> Instead of having to carefully figure out precisely which parts of the
> >> code should be considered GPL for the Debian package, I'm tempted to
> >> consider the whole codebase GPL for this purpose.
> >>
> >> Does this sound sane? Are there some particular steps I should follow?
> >> Should I create a Debian repack of the source where every file's
> >> copyright header reflects the above, or do I only need to do this for
> >> (header) files included in the binary packages? Or does it suffice for
> >> d/copyright to reflect it?
> >
> > I don't think you need to (or even should) change the licence notices on
> > individual files.
>
> But if I don't even change this in the header files (installed with
> libgudhi-dev), isn't there a significant risk that I will mislead Debian
> users into thinking that they may use every part of the GUDHI library
> under the MIT?
IMO it's always the case that people need to chase through their
dependency stack to answer this kind of question, not just the top
level.
However, if you're worried you could patch in an extra bit of commentary
in the header files. There's no need to repack the original tarball for
this, and you mustn't remove the MIT licence notices (doing so would
likely itself be a violation of the MIT licence under which you received
that code, since it normally requires including "this permission notice"
or similar wording).
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@debian.org]
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