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Bug#1122270: base-files: Adding more Creative Commons licenses

* Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org> [2025-12-09 16:35]:


 reassign 1122270 debian-policy
 thanks

On Tue, Dec 09, 2025 at 04:21:40PM +0100, Rafael Laboissière wrote:


Package: base-files
Version: 14
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,
Are there any plans to include the full text of Creative Commons licenses beyond CC0-1.0 in the directory /usr/share/common-licenses?
I ask because I have noticed an increasing number of packages containing files being released under one of the CC licenses. Here is the count for one of my trixie systems: 

    $ grep "^License:" CC-" /usr/share/doc/*/copyright | wc -l
    657
In addition, including the full text of these licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses would save substantial disk space in Debian systems. For example, the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license text in one of the /usr/share/doc/*.copyright files on my system is over 400 lines long.
Some time ago, I decided not to decide about this sort of thing. Instead, the procedure is to reach consensus in debian-policy first. (See "Why isn't license "foo" included in common-licenses?" in base-files FAQ)
I'm reassigning the bug for you. It looks like there are other bugs asking for similar things: 

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795402

(but without any outcome so far).


Thank you for the reassignment and the explanation.
I apologize for contributing to the noise. I see that everything is explained in the base-files' FAQ. I had overlooked this file. Before filing the current bug report, I looked at the list of open bugs against base-files and found no one asking for the inclusion of CC license files. The reason is simple: previous bugs like this have been reassigned to debian-policy.
I am wondering how we can avoid “mistakes” like mine in the future. One solution would be to file a bug report against base-files with an informative title, such as “base-files: NEVER ASK TO INCLUDE NEW COPYRIGHT FILES,” tag it “wontfix,” and keep it permanently open. In the body of the bug report, explain that the correct package for such requests is debian-policy. This is just an idea. 

Best,

Rafael
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