- Package:
- debian-policy
- Source:
- debian-policy
- Submitter:
- Markus Koschany
- Date:
- 2026-04-26 09:51:03 UTC
- Severity:
- wishlist
- Blocked By:
-
Bug Title 885698 77
Update and document criteria for inclusion in /usr/share/common-licenses important stable testing unstable 29 days ago
Hi, as discussed on debian-devel [1] I would like to request that more DFSG licenses are added to /usr/share/common-licenses and that package maintainers are allowed to reference them. License: AGPL-3.0 Source: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.de.html Example packages: https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#GNU_AFFERO_GENERAL_PUBLIC_LICENSE_.28AGPL-3.29 Regards, Markus [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2017/12/msg00209.html
Hi, Markus Koschany wrote: What commonly installed packages use this license? Is ghostscript the only one, or are there others? I'm neutral on this change. ghostscript is installed on most installations and uses this license and unfortunately pieces of it get incorporated into other packages like poppler-data. If it weren't for ghostscript then I would be against this change. (src/utils/qpaeq in pulseaudio is about to become a non-example, since its licensing was simplified to LGPL upstream.) Thanks and hope that helps, Jonathan
Hi, Am 13.12.2017 um 19:10 schrieb Jonathan Nieder: Actually my idea was not to distinguish between "commonly installed" packages and simply "used in packages" anymore. Maintainers will roughly save the same amount of time by not copying this license. I also assume that by adding all those license to common-licenses users will have more disk space available in the end. Apart from my example packages you can find this license also in the following packages: Just go to codesearch.debian.net and use AGPL path:debian/copyright as your search query. Notable packages are pulseaudio, debian-goodies, gnutls28, pelican, and many more. I expect that more network or web applications will use this license in the future. Regards, Markus
Hi, Markus Koschany wrote: This seems odd to me. Wouldn't copying upstream's LICENSE file verbatim be the action that involves the least amount of time? I have always assumed common-licenses is about disk space and transfer time savings, not maintainer time savings. Thanks. The example in pulseaudio is the bug fixed upstream that I mentioned before (src/utils/qpaeq had a different license from the rest of the package; they've fixed it now). I remain neutral on this change. I'm not against it, but not enthusiastic about it, and look forward to hearing others' thoughts on it before seconding. Sincerely, Jonathan
Am 13.12.2017 um 19:40 schrieb Jonathan Nieder: No, this is entirely about our most precious resources: time and human beings You also have to format the license in such a way that it complies with copyright format 1.0. For instance that means you have to put dots on every empty line. You can make a simple experiment: Take a stopwatch, find a plain-text version of this license on the internet, format the file according to copyright format 1.0 and stop the time. Then stop the time how long it takes to write this: License: [AGPL-3+]
The time will be about the same. The real time is spent look at all the source files checking whether they do not carry different licences or license grants that the main file, which is actually very common, for example aclocal.m4. (yes, the ftp masters do that). Otherwise we could write a script to generate the copyright file. In any case, before going farther with this we need a run of tools/license-count. Cheers,
On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 19:59:15 +0100, Markus Koschany wrote: (Just as a side note, I'm in favour of adding more licenses to common-licenses): cme: using Dpkg::Copyright model License AGPL-3 is not used in Files: section License AGPL-3 is not used in Files: section Warning in 'License': Unused license: AGPL-3 Changes applied to dpkg-copyright configuration: - License: added entry AGPL-3 cme modify dpkg-copyright 'License:"AGPL-3"' -save 0.95s user 0.04s system 99% cpu 0.990 total (Admittedly it doesn't work or needs different runes for AGPL-3+.) If you have the file lying around: % time cme run paste-license --arg license=AGPL-3+ --arg file=AGPL-3.0 cme: using Dpkg::Copyright model License AGPL-3+ is not used in Files: section Changes applied to dpkg-copyright configuration: - License: added entry AGPL-3+ - License:"AGPL-3+" text has new value: ' Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <[...]' cme run paste-license --arg license=AGPL-3+ --arg file=AGPL-3.0 0.93s user 0.03s system 99% cpu 0.957 total Cheers, gregor
That's 'cme update dpkg-copyright' which does 95% of the required work. See https://github.com/dod38fr/config-model/wiki/Updating-debian-copyright-file-with-cme All the best
Am 14.12.2017 um 09:03 schrieb Dominique Dumont: I personally think my proposal to add more licenses to /usr/share/common-licenses is unrelated to embracing a tool that simplifies the creation of debian/copyright. The central question is: "Do we really need to duplicate license texts in debian/copyright or can we just reference them in /usr/share/common-licenses?" This would already be simpler and save more time, even without using a tool like cme. I'm not against it but it should be discussed in a separate bug report. Regards, Markus
Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> writes: license-count thinks there are 189 packages in the archive using the AGPL-3.0. Comparison with a few other licenses already in common-licenses: AGPL 3 189 Apache 2.0 2672 Artistic 3804 Artistic 2.0 200 GFDL 1.2 314 GFDL 1.3 138 MPL 1.1 224 MPL 2.0 176 It seems reasonable to include this one.