On the license of python-debian

[Philippe Ombredanne]

Hi:

python-debian is the canonical library to handle debian files. It is
GPL-licensed yet also used as a library by quite a few tools [1] that
are not GPL-licensed but rather ISC, MIT, Apache and similar both at
debian and elsewhere.

Would the copyleft of python-debian flow to a tool or library that is
calling and using python-debian as a library?

If yes, could it make sense to consider some sorts of licensing update
either for all these FOSS libraries or rather for python-debian proper
such that the effective licensing of these tools may not be impacted?

PS: I am maintaining origin and license code scanning tools written in
Python [2] And I am considering to add a dependency on python-debian to
export valid machine readable copyright files created from a scancode
license and copyright file [3]. ScanCode is Apache-licensed.

[1] Some examples:
https://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/decopy.git/ is ISC licensed
https://github.com/xolox/python-deb-pkg-tools is MIT licensed
https://github.com/jwodder/aptrepo  is MIT licensed
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pet/pet3.git/ seems to be ISC licensed
https://github.com/sassoftware/python-debpkgr is Apache licensed

[2] https://github.com/nexB/

[3] https://github.com/nexB/scancode-toolkit

-- 
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne