How to determine the license of D-Bus interface spec files (XML)?
[cc-me please; I am not on list]
Hi debian-legal list and Debian D-Bus maintainers,
Recently I encountered a package that has unclear license status and I
would like some help from you.
Please take a look at "peek" software[1]. Its packaging repo can be
found at [2]. Files in doubt are in [3].
Some quick facts:
* Vala source code files are generated from D-Bus interface spec files
(XML format) using "vala-dbus-binding-tool" (exist in Debian Archive)
* Some of XML spec files are generated using "dbus-send" tool (exist
in Debian Archive)
* Other XML files are copied from Freedesktop.org website [4] and gnome-shell
source code
Now, here is the problem: contents in fd.o website has no licensing
information. I asked (daniels) at irc #freedesktop and the person said
that the status quo is "undefined" and it is not likely to change in
near future.
However, I'm not sure about the license of D-Bus interface itself as
well as the XML file that describes such interface. Anyway, it is an
interface, not any concrete implementation. In fact, I can regenerate
the XML spec file included in [4] using "dbus-send" tool too with a
Debian system where dbus (daemon) is running.
With a GPL-3+ project like [1], what is the best practice to satisfy
Debian's requirement about packaging and license?
[1] https://github.com/phw/peek
[2] http://salsa.debian.org/hosiet-guest/peek
[3] https://github.com/phw/peek/tree/master/src/dbus
[4] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/file-manager-interface/
P.S. I'm asking this question looking for an answer to make sure that
this package won't get rejected during the NEW process by ftp-masters
due to licensing problems.
--
Sincerely,
Boyuan Yang
Reply to: