The DCO is not technically a license, but it is a legal document that usually comes along with a license from the contributor to the project (that license usually being the project license). It also serves to replace a Contributor License Agreement, offering only a base level of assurances that the contributor has permission to make the contributions. Without a DCO, a contribution is legally suspect; it carries no inherent guarantee that the contributor wrote the code or owns the code, for all you know the contribution was just copied off stack overflow, or from the contributor's company's private code base.
In practice, although it is not a license, the DCO should be accepted as is for the same reasons license text is accepted; free software does not depend on the freedom to modify the DCO, and is in fact better served by a non-modifiable DCO. There is still no real reason why the DCO itself needs to be licensed under free terms, and plenty of reasons why it shouldn't. This is a non-issue. Regards, Daniel J. Hakimi B.S. Philosophy, RPI 2012 B.S. Computer Science, RPI 2012 J.D. Cardozo Law 2015 On Tue, Nov 26, 2024 at 11:51 AM Sam Hartman <hartm...@debian.org> wrote: > >>>>> "Simon" == Simon Josefsson <si...@josefsson.org> writes: > > Simon> Sam Hartman <hartm...@debian.org> writes: > >>>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Josefsson <si...@josefsson.org> writes: > >> > Simon> Interesting -- am I understanding you correctly that you > Simon> would like to treat the DCO as a license text? And that it > Simon> is license that applies to the work in Debian? > > Simon> As far as I understand, DCO's are about granting rights on > Simon> contributions. Not granting rights to users, which is what > Simon> the DFSG is about. So I'm not sure I follow why the DFSG is > Simon> relevant for the DCO text at all. The DCO appears to me like > Simon> any other text file in a source package. > > Simon> If you believe the DCO is part of the license grant on a > Simon> work, and there is consensus on that interpretation, should > Simon> it then be mentioned in debian/copyright? > > Simon> /Simon > > Simon> DFSG 4 -- > Simon> https://www.debian.org/social_contract.en.html#guidelines > > Simon> Integrity of The Author's Source Code > > Simon> The license may restrict source-code from being distributed > Simon> in modified form only if the license allows the distribution > Simon> of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of > Simon> modifying the program at build time. The license must > Simon> explicitly permit distribution of software built from > Simon> modified source code. The license may require derived works > Simon> to carry a different name or version number from the original > Simon> software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages > Simon> all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from > Simon> being modified.) > >
