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Re: Copyright License Proposal



On 06/06/2011 11:14 AM, Ingy dot Net wrote:
> Funny you should ask. Much of it, yes. I am the original creator of
> Module::Install. But that doesn't matter in principle. It might only matter
> in that I can help change the policy such that using Module::Install does
> not impose any copyright complications on its users. How do I make that so
> for Debian?

afaict, if use of some module requires copying/embedding code from that
module, then you've created *some* complications, mainly because your
users no longer have copyright over their entire module.

But i don't think this is a big deal; the important part is that you
grant them a reasonable license to use that code, modify it,
redistribute it, and redistribute their modifications.

The only thing they can't do is claim that they are the copyright holder
for the code (because they aren't).

> Does Debian need to track issues that are not any concern of the original
> authors? In other words, if a CPAN author can say that certain concerns are
> not important to them, why does Debian need to make them important?

Unfortunately, unless the upstream author already cares about all of the
things that Debian cares about, there is additional work that will need
to be done for the software to be packaged for debian.

For example, Debian cares about license compliance and license
compatibility; and Debian cares about full DFSG-freeness.  Not all CPAN
authors explicitly share those concerns.

If your tool can make it easy for a CPAN author to see some obvious
places where they might have to think a bit more about Debian-related
concerns, that'd be great.  And if it could propose reasonable things
they (as both the main author and the main copyright-holder) can fix to
be more Debian-friendly, that would be even better!

But if the tool decides that the Debian-related concerns aren't really
valid concerns in the first place, then it won't help people get their
software into Debian.

Regards,

	--dkg

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