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Re: Packaging text licenses



On Sat, 14 Dec 2019 14:01:18 +0100 Baptiste BEAUPLAT wrote:

> On 12/14/19 1:03 PM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > A rich collection of Free license fulltexts is relevant, not only for 
> > our users to pick from (even on a lonely island) and copy into new 
> > development project, but also as reference e.g. for testing license 
> > checkers.
> > 
> > What is _not_ helpful in my opinion, however, is yet another manually 
> > curated selection of random license texts.  What I see generally useful 
> > is to package this: https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML
> 
> That looks like a great list to package. I'll need input on the
> repository license status from the legal team as it could be ambiguous

I would be extremely cautious before including license texts as content
to be shipped by a Debian package.

A number of license texts are not themselves licensed under DFSG-free
terms.

And Debian promises to remain 100 % free, see [SC] #1. Any content of a
Debian package (in main) must be free according to the DFSG.

[SC]: <https://www.debian.org/social_contract>

License texts are usually [considered] the sole exception, but I think
the exception only applies when the license text is included in the
package *for the sole purpose* of documenting the legal terms under
which some part of the package is released.
I don't think the exception may also apply when the license text is the
*actual payload* of the package (for instance, a package shipping the
text for CC-by-nc-nd-v1.0, when nothing in the package itself is
released under that license).

[considered]: <https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/06/msg00299.html>



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