Re: Does Debian itself have a license?

[Anthony DeRobertis <anthony@derobert.net>]

On 09/09/2018 12:51 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> My understanding is that the entire operating system is delivered as
> packages, and each package declares its copyright information in its
> ‘/usr/share/doc/$PACKAGENAME/copyright’ document.
That does raise an interesting question — things like the package long 
description are used all over the place, and combined together (e.g., in 
the package lists). Translations are made, maintained outside the 
package (AFAIK), and then combined together and displayed various places.

Is https://packages.debian.org/stretch/bash a GPL violation, because it 
doesn't include the full text of the GPL, a copyright statement, etc.? 
In fact, it claims (via tiny license terms link at the bottom) to be 
under MIT.

In practice, we seem to consider use of package descriptions to be fair 
use, and ignore the license.