On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 07:17:00 +1100 Riley Baird wrote: > > How is the license of a binary Debian package determined? > > > > The file debian/copyright only contains the license of the sources; > > however the binary license may differ -- f.e. when a BSD source is > > linked to a GPL library. Also there is usually more than one license > > used in the sources. > > I'd say that it would probably be a matter of checking the license for > all of the sources that were used to make the particular binary that you > are concerned about - and then, checking the Debian dependencies for > packages which your binary links to, in case there is a GPL-like linking > clause.
That's the way to go, as far as I know. Unfortunately, it may be tedious and time consuming in some cases... :-( > > > Since Debian is a binary distribution, I am wondering if there is any > > canonical way to get the license of a (binary) package? > > Not that I know of, unfortunately. Hopefully someone else will have an idea. [...] I am not aware of any requirement (in the current Debian Policy) to document the effective license for binary packages. The debian/copyright file is intended for clearly documenting the licensing status of source packages, not the effective licenses of binary packages built from them. You may want to take a look at: https://bugs.debian.org/694657#45 https://bugs.debian.org/694657#130 The whole bug log could be an interesting read, but it's quite long, so please check it out only if you are searching for a way to kill time! ;-) I am not aware of any update on the matter: I suppose the determination of the effective licenses of binary packages is still something to be done manually. I hope this answers Ole's question, although maybe in a disappointing way... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/ fsck is a four letter word... ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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