Bug#291460: Inclusion of Apache Software License versions in /usr/share/common-licenses

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> I did a check today, and there are over 230 binary packages in the
> archive with the Apache License.  (I believe essentially all of them are
> Apache 2.0, although the simple grep I did made that a bit harder to
> check.)
>
> I think that reaches the threshold for making it worthwhile to include
> the license in base-files, particularly given that it's been requested
> several times, although we don't really have a formal policy on how many
> packages are enough packages.
>
> Cc'ing Santiago Vila just FYI; I know you've delegated the decision to
> the Policy group.

I have gotten no further feedback on this proposal.  I would like to
resolve this bug for the next Policy release one way or the other.  Could
others reading the Policy list please express an opinion on whether we
should add the Apache 2.0 license to the list of common-licenses?

Thanks!

> Here's a proposed patch:
>
> --- orig/policy.sgml
> +++ mod/policy.sgml
> @@ -8693,21 +8693,22 @@
>  	</p>
>  
>  	<p>
> -	  Packages distributed under the UCB BSD license, the Artistic
> -	  license, the GNU GPL (version 2 or 3), the GNU LGPL (versions
> -	  2, 2.1, or 3), and the GNU FDL (version 1.2) should refer to
> -	  the corresponding files under
> -	  <file>/usr/share/common-licenses</file>,<footnote>
> +	  Packages distributed under the UCB BSD license, the Apache
> +	  license (version 2.0), the Artistic license, the GNU GPL
> +	  (version 2 or 3), the GNU LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), and
> +	  the GNU FDL (version 1.2) should refer to the corresponding
> +	  files under <file>/usr/share/common-licenses</file>,<footnote>
>  	    <p>
>  	      In particular,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/BSD</file>,
> +              <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0</file>,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic</file>,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2</file>,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3</file>,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-2</file>,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-2.1</file>,
>                <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-3</file>, and
> -              <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL-1.2</file>,
> +              <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL-1.2</file>
>                respectively.
>              </p>
>            </footnote> rather than quoting them in the copyright

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>