Re: CodeIgniter license

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

* Steve Langasek:

> There is no requirement in Debian to track the copyright status of
> the work beyond what's required by statute or by the licenses
> themselves.

If we do not track the copyright status, how can we make sure that the
licensing conditions actually match the requirements of the DFSG?

> The risk of a hostile entity deliberately injecting code into our
> archive so that they can sue us later for copyright infringement is
> remote - and the sort of hypothetical that we shouldn't be basing
> our policies around.

There is, however, considerable risk that we pick up code from some
upstream where upstream was negligent or has deliberately violated
copyright requirements.  If we make it a point of policy that a fuzzy
copyright status is a worthwhile goal (so that people can escape evil
dictatorships, viz the Dissident Test), I fear that this would
encourage such sloppiness or copyright violations.  Attribution is at
least a bit of a deterrent here.

This risk is unfortunately not remote.  People do label pictures taken
by others with the wrong CC license, and those who rely on the
incorrect labeling commit copyright infringement if they make use of
the CC-granted permissions.