#884223 debian-policy: please add AGPL-3.0 to common licenses

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

#884223#5
Date:
2017-12-12 19:21:09 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#10
Date:
2017-12-13 18:10:38 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#15
Date:
2017-12-13 18:29:28 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#20
Date:
2017-12-13 18:40:54 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#25
Date:
2017-12-13 18:59:15 UTC
From:
To:
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+]

#884223#30
Date:
2017-12-13 19:25:22 UTC
From:
To:
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,

#884223#35
Date:
2017-12-13 19:26:27 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#40
Date:
2017-12-14 08:03:48 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#45
Date:
2017-12-14 13:38:10 UTC
From:
To:
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

#884223#52
Date:
2017-12-27 21:52:52 UTC
From:
To:
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.