On Tue, Feb 4, 2025 at 5:29 PM Simon Josefsson <si...@josefsson.org> wrote: > "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amaca...@einval.com> writes: > > On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 11:58:00PM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote: > > Packaging the software for Debian amounts to modification: minimal > > modification but modification anyway. That presumably means we > > can't distribute it at all, even in non-free. > > Thanks for your thoughts. > > Why would packaging software in Debian necessarily amount to > modification of it?
This creates gray area, especially when you consider something like d/patches (or sed+d/rules). Adding the packaging directory is technically a modification of your source directory. You can try to keep it separate, but that's not how our build tools work and then you're getting into spirit of the law stuff. You can make a case for non-free, but then you'll definitely want to look into the packaging history of truecrypt. They actually included their own debian/ directory, making it a clear license violation to touch anything inside.
