Bug#833709: Please add the MIT/Expat license to common-licenses
Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist
Numerous packages use the MIT/Expat license, and currently all of those
packages need to include it in their copyright files. I'd love to see
this license added to /usr/share/common-licenses/ ; this would require a
Policy change to section 12.5 to allow.
I would propose putting the original "Expat" version of the MIT license
in /usr/share/common-licenses/MIT .
(I wouldn't currently suggest adding the MIT/X11 license, because many
common versions of it mention specific parties by name in the
non-endorsement clause, rather than using phrases like "the authors" or
"the copyright holders". The MIT/Expat license doesn't have that
problem.)
For reference, the MIT/Expat license text:
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of
the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Proposed diff to Policy in git-format-patch form:
----- 8< -----
>From 31949fd85228459d3236f34f144aa2475934044c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2016 20:57:12 -1000
Subject: [PATCH] Add the MIT/Expat license to common-licenses
---
policy.sgml | 5 +++--
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index 9cd182b..2026582 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -10932,8 +10932,8 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
Packages distributed under the Apache license (version 2.0), the
Artistic license, the GNU GPL (versions 1, 2, or 3), the GNU
LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), the GNU FDL (versions 1.2 or 1.3),
- and the Mozilla Public License (version 1.1 or 2.0) should refer
- to the corresponding files under
+ the MIT/Expat license, and the Mozilla Public License (version 1.1
+ or 2.0) should refer to the corresponding files under
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses</file>,<footnote>
<p>
In particular,
@@ -10947,6 +10947,7 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-3</file>,
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL-1.2</file>,
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL-1.3</file>,
+ <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/MIT</file>,
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/MPL-1.1</file>, and
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/MPL-2.0</file>
respectively. The University of California BSD license is
--
2.8.1
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