On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 06:44:39PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Bas Wijnen <shevek@fmf.nl> writes: > > On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 12:04:48PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > >>> I think the best way is to include the license text in > >>> debian/copyright just like any other license that is not in > >>> common-licenses. > > >> We probably don't really want to include a copy of the GPLv1 in every > >> Perl package. > > > If the license is used in many packages, we should add it to > > common-licenses. If it isn't, then it should be no problem to include > > it in debian/copyright. > > It depends on what you mean by "used." I really doubt that most of the > Perl authors really care one way or the other, but Perl's license says GPL > v1 or later, and most of the Perl packages say "same license as Perl." Then it might be reasonable to copy the license text in the perl copyright file, and point there instead of common-licenses. A quick check on my system shows that some of them do this, indeed (but /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright doesn't contain GPL-1). > So my original statement that not many packages are in that situation is > kind of true and kind of not, depending on how you feel about the Perl > situation. (I don't know of any packages that say *only* GPL v1.) If we distribute under GPL-1, then the license should be on the system, IMO. > Anyway, if you feel strongly about this, you should probably say something > in Bug#436105, since so far the opinions have been that adding it isn't > worthwhile. Right. The argument there is that GPL-1 is broken, and shouldn't be used. In other words, that's the philosophical argument that it is better for free software not to use GPL-1, and that we choose to consider this more important than the freedom of our users to use it. IMO it's fine to make that choice, but we should be open about it: change the file headers, document the choice in debian/copyright, and disallow redistribution of sources obtained through Debian under GPL-1 (all that on a per-package basis; the choice should be made by the maintainers, and those who make a different choice can include the license in debian/copyright. If there're too many of them, we should add it to common-licenses (or start a GR to "force" them to drop GPL-1). I've CC'd the bug, thanks for the pointer. Thanks, Bas -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://pcbcn10.phys.rug.nl/e-mail.html
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