Hi Paul,
On Mon, Jan 08, 2024 at 12:54:25PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Fri, 2024-01-05 at 22:31 -0800, Ross Vandegrift wrote:
>
> > Imagine I take some code from a freely licensed reference implementation and
> > customize it. The result is a derived work. But this embedding isn't
> > removable - the reference implementation shouldn't accept changes to integrate
> > it into a specific project.
>
> The reference implementation should be flexible enough to work as a
> library imported/loaded/linked by any project that wants to use it.
Perhaps - but some people provide code without having any interest in the
implementation details that users might run into. Still, that code might be
useful to use & distribute.
This is one of many ways Debian and upstream might have different or
conflicting goals.
> > It'd be reasonable to include the original license and copyright statements.
>
> Right.
>
> > If I do, Debian requires packagers to describe the license and copyright on
> > those embedded license/copyright files. And I'm puzzled about how to do that
> > best.
>
> Same as for any other file in the source package, list in the
> debian/copyright which files have which copyrights and licenses.
Heh, right - the problem is executing that. :) Folks typically take care to
document the copyright on code, not so often licenses (the FSF licenses being
the exception, they are clear).
> > (I realize not much hangs on this - but cme/licensecheck raised the issue to
> > me. I can ignore it, but also got curious and tried to figure out what to do.)
>
> What issue did it print? Which package/code is this about BTW?
src:efl is a pastice of original work, dervied code, and vendored copies. The
situation I asked about is somewhat simplified from real ones. Here's two
harder cases than what the wiki considers:
- https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-e-team/efl/-/blob/debian/sid/src/static_libs/rg_etc/README
This is a Zlib license statement for code derived from another project. This
copy has been rewritten from C++ -> C. So the changes wouldn't be appropriate
for the upstream project.
What license and copyright holders can I write for this file? The text is
derived from the Zlib license, but I also don't know who wrote that.
- https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-e-team/efl/-/blob/debian/sid/src/static_libs/fnmatch/COPYRIGHT
This is from an included copy of musl's fnmatch algorithm. I think EFL
includes this for portability, to ensure that the same fnmatch is used on
Linux, BSD, and Windows. Even if that's not needed in Debian, I don't think I
can link to musl and glibc.
Interestingly, base-files (which contains /usr/share/common-licenses) doesn't
contain any copyright information for some of it's licenses. It also doesn't
use dep5 copyright, and so probably not licensechcek/cme. So no one is being
bugged to document who holds the copyright to the MPL-1.1.
Ross
[1] - src:efl has those too. I'm recently trying to remove a libunbreak copy
in the static_libs directory.
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