On the license of python-debian

[dann frazier]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2017 at 01:05:29PM +0100, Philippe Ombredanne wrote:
> 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?

Philippe,
  Thanks for bringing this up and looking into the existing use cases.
For what little of my code still exists, I'd be happy to consider dual
licensing under another DFSG-compatible license.

  -dann

> 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
>