Re: how to respect licensing for derived installer images?

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Jonas Smedegaard writes ("how to respect licensing for derived installer images?"):
> I suspect the effective license of the combined work of the official 
> Debian install images is quite likely some version of GPL, which means I 
> will need to provide (or promise to provide) sources involved.
> 
> Since the "preferred form of editing" for my³ changes is the official 
> binary images, do a link to those satisfy my obligations?

I think the preferred form for modification is _all of_:
 - the official binary images
 - your software for modifying them
 - the source code for all the software in the image

> Or, if I need to provide source code for all pieces of the image, even 
> though arguably I do not change any of it (only recodes their cpio and 
> vfat encoding), how do I then enumerate what is involved?

I assume that the installer image builder leaves a log somewhere of
the software that's included.

I would write a notice like this:

  I hereby offer to provide the source code for the relevant Debian
  binary packages, included in the installer, on request.  However,
  you will probably find it easier to acquire these packages from the
  official Debian resources, ftp.debian.org and/or
  snapshot.debian.org.

> Also, who decides what is the effective license of that work?  Should I 
> have asked -legal@d.o? Or leader@d.o? Or is -boot@d.o or whichtever 
> other team producing what ended up on our website the right ones to ask?

Conventional wisdom (with which I do not agree) is that something like
an installer image is an aggregation, so does not need to have a
single licence.  Rather, there are separate licences for all the
pieces.

Ian.