Re: FRR package in Debian violates the GPL licence

[David Lamparter <equinox@diac24.net>]

> My understanding is that those files in themselves are not derivative
> works of GPLed source code, but the entire FRR project is. At least,
> that's the judgment of the project in
> https://github.com/FRRouting/frr/issues/1923

For the record, with both my hats as the Debian maintainer for the frr
source package as well as a TSC member on the FRRouting project, I would
like to note that this is indeed my/our understanding of our licensing
situation.

We expressly acknowledge that FRR binary packages must be distributed in
their entirety under GPLv2 or newer, and this is what I thought is
indicated in the Debian package too.  (If I have messed that up, I
sincerely apologize and will fix that as soon as possible - please point
me in the appropriate direction.)

We do not believe any of the _source_code_ in ldpd or babeld is
derivative of Quagga (or other) GPL source code.

The respective original authors have expressed and reaffirmed their
wishes for the code to remain under a permissive license.  While we
could obviously just slap GPL on top, we have decided to try and honour
the original author's requests.

We would also have liked to comply with Paul's wishes as an author on
Quagga.  However, since the two are mutually exclusive, and Paul's
wishes are applying to other people's code while ldpd & babeld are about
the respective author's wishes for their own code, the latter seemed the
more appropriate choice.  As we don't understand the code in question to
be derivative, we don't see a legal obligation in this choice.

Cheers,


-David


P.S.: please Cc: me as I'm not subscribed to debian-legal.