Classification of the APSL as non-DFSG-compliant
Hello!
I would like to adopt the package hfsprogs which is required for debian-installer
on Apple PowerBook and PowerMac.
Since 2012, there has been a bug report opened against the claiming that the
package is not DFSG-compliant due to the APSL license and I have some doubts
in the current situation.
For one, it seems that the claim that hfsprogs is licensed under APSL-2.0 [2]
is not correct. Looking at the sources upstream, the various source code
files have at most APSL-1.2 [3, 4, 5] and not 2.0 as claimed in the Debian
package.
Secondly, for the APSL-1.2, it seems that the only clause that makes the
license non-DFSG-compliant is this one:
> (c) You must make Source Code of all Your Deployed Modifications publicly
> available under the terms of this License, including the license grants
> set forth in Section 3 below, for as long as you Deploy the Covered Code
> or twelve (12) months from the date of initial Deployment, whichever is
> longer. You should preferably distribute the Source Code of Your Deployed
> Modifications electronically (e.g. download from a web site); and
It was claimed in [6] that this clause makes the APSL-1.2 non-DFSG-compliant as it's
not possible for Debian to keep every single modification around for at least
12 months.
This claim may have been valid in 2001, but I think it does not hold up for
2020 since source code to packaging in Debian is usually maintained in
Salsa or Github and therefore keeping all modifications available for 12
months and longer, plus there is Debian Snapshots [7] which keeps a older
versions of a package around as well - including source code.
Given these circumstances, is it still justified to claim that the APSL-1.2
is non-DFSG-compliant? Note, I'm particularly talking about version 1.2 and
not version 2.0 as 1.2 is used even in the latest version of the HFS filesystem
utilities that we need for debian-installer on Apple PowerMacs [8].
For the APSL-2.0, the situation seems more complicated [9] but a re-evaluation
would be welcome here as well but necessary at the moment as I'm interested
in getting the hfsprogs package updated.
Adrian
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=666707
> [2] https://sources.debian.org/src/hfsprogs/332.25-11/debian/copyright/
> [3] https://opensource.apple.com/source/diskdev_cmds/diskdev_cmds-332.25/newfs_hfs.tproj/newfs_hfs.c.auto.html
> [4] https://opensource.apple.com/source/diskdev_cmds/diskdev_cmds-332.25/fsck_hfs.tproj/fsck_hfs.c.auto.html
> [5] https://opensource.apple.com/source/diskdev_cmds/diskdev_cmds-332.25/mount_hfs.tproj/mount_hfs.c.auto.html
> [6] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/09/msg00103.html
> [7] http://snapshot.debian.org/package/hfsprogs/
> [8] https://opensource.apple.com/source/hfs/hfs-522.0.9/APPLE_LICENSE.auto.html
> [9] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/06/msg00573.html
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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