Re: Rv: What license for our packaging?

["Emmet Hikory" <emmet.hikory@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Paul Wise wrote:
>> --- El sáb, 23/8/08, Eddy Petrișor escribió:
>
>>> I propose that, from now on, we use the BSD license for our
>>> packaging[2].
>
> I prefer we use the same license as upstream, except for non-free
> packages, where BSD/MIT would be appropriate.

    I'd like to also speak in favour of this choice.  This ensures a
reduction in confusion over the licensing of any patches that may be
applied ("When using a patch system, are patches part of packaging"?
(1)).  Although the use of a more permissive license may be be
convenient for the purposes of sharing various packaging tricks, the
majoirty of such tricks are likely to fall below the threshold for
which a license must be obtained in most jurisdictions, or be created
by someone closely involved in Debian, so that the overhead of asking
permission for use outside the license is fairly low where the license
under which it is distributed is incompatible with the licensing for
the package in which it might be applied.

    In the case where packaging must be differently licensed (e.g.
non-free), I'd personally prefer to see the use of the MIT or ISC
licenses to the "BSD" license, just to reduce the confusion that may
result from questions of "Which BSD license?", and to avoid the use of
/usr/share/common-licenses/BSD so that copyrights are not arbitrarily
assigned to the Regents of the University of California (which may not
be possible in some jurisdictions without the agreement of the
recipient of such a copyright assignment).

1:  This is a rhetorical question asked for the purposes of
demonstrating the described confusion, and is not intended to be
answered (and further, I doubt we can answer it with our collective
level of both legal training and willingness to provide legal advice).

-- 
Emmet HIKORY