Nicholas D Steeves wrote: > Both BSD 3-clause and BSD 2-clause allow relicensing as GPL, thus so > long as the licensing terms are complied with correctly BSD code can > perpetually and unidirectionally flow to GPL projects.
Yes, I agree. It's perfectly okay for the Debian package(s) to be distributed as GPL, *as long as* the original BSD license text is still retained. > I'm also unsure whether the patch > that changes the user-visible bits and the out-of-date > debian/copyright outweigh the 2-clause license that wasn't stripped > from the headers of various files. Speaking for myself as upstream project lead, I'm not worried about the legal status of already-built packages, but I would prefer that the upstream (BSD 2-clause) license remain user-visible in future Debian builds. The simplest way to achieve this would be to remove use-system-licenses.patch and let the GUI again display /usr/share/audacious/COPYING as the upstream version does. Alternatively, debian/copyright could be updated to include the full text of the upstream license, plus any Debian-specific bits (packaging copyrights, etc.), and the patch could be updated so that the GUI displays the installed version of that file instead (I think that would be /usr/share/doc/audacious/copyright?) Francesco Poli wrote: > The Audacious upstream developers may be willing to help, by clarifying > any doubts upon request. Yes, for sure. > If that is deemed to be needed or useful, it could be feasible to also > fix the debian/copyright file for audacious version 3.7.2 in a Debian > stable update (and possibly also address the same issue for > oldstable)... On the other hand, this extra effort could perhaps be > considered not worth doing. For my part, I'm not worried about the stable+oldstable packages being fixed, only that the problem is resolved in a new unstable upload going forward. I think that the other upstream developers would agree. Thank you both for the prompt reply and good discussion! John
