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Clarify license for Debian packaging

See original GitHub issue

Currently I am working on creating Debian package for pylama (https://bugs.debian.org/779449). However, the content of pylama/__init__.py is confused. The comment string says it is BSD license, but the LICENSE file is LGPL-3+.

    """
Code audit tool for python.
:copyright: 2013 by Kirill Klenov.
:license: BSD, see LICENSE for more details.
"""

__version__ = "7.0.9"
__project__ = "pylama"
__author__ = "Kirill Klenov <horneds@gmail.com>"
__license__ = "GNU LGPL"

Please help to clarify the actual license of this package by removing other license name/text in pylama so that we can work on Debian packaging, thanks.

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Issue Analytics

  • State:closed
  • Created 7 years ago
  • Reactions:1
  • Comments:5 (2 by maintainers)

github_iconTop GitHub Comments

2reactions
susamcommented, Aug 15, 2018

Here are the commit history details regarding the licensing terms:

  • Commit f6f4aab6 (2012-08-17) is the initial commit that shows that the project was originally licensed under GNU LGPL.
  • Commits b1b10d14 (2013-05-21), 868b5337 (2013-06-06) and dcb35e46 (2013-08-07) mention BSD license.
  • Commit a6ce4655 (2013-06-06) shows the intention of moving from GNU LGPL to BSD license.
  • Commit 4f13f63a (2014-06-30) mentions GNU LGPL in the classifiers metadata.

In the latest master branch (at commit c38d598):

  • Files LICENSE and setup.py mention GNU LGPL only.
  • Files docs/index.rst, pylama/libs/inirama.py, and README.rst mention BSD license only.
  • File pylama/__init__.py mentions both BSD license and GNU LGPL.

The project was originally licensed under GNU LGPL but later the author appears to have an intention of moving to BSD license. While there are several commits that provide evidence in favour of this conclusion, commit 4f13f63a contradicts this conclusion. The only place in the project that attempts to communicate the license explicitly to users or readers is README.rst which mentions:

Licensed under a BSD license.

It is unclear which BSD license (BSD-3-Clause or BSD-2-Clause) is meant here.

Here is Debian’s interpretation of the licensing terms (quoting from /usr/share/doc/pylama/copyright of Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)):

Format: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
Upstream-Name: pylama
Source: https://github.com/klen/pylama

Files:     *
Copyright: 2013 copyright Kirill Klenov <horneds@gmail.com>
License:   LGPL-3+

Files:     pylama/__init__.py
Copyright: 2013 copyright Kirill Klenov <horneds@gmail.com>
License:   LGPL-3+ or BSD-3-clause

Files:     pylama/libs/inirama.py
Copyright: 2013 copyright Kirill Klenov <horneds@gmail.com>
License:   BSD-3-clause

Files:     debian/*
Copyright: ChangZhuo Chen (陳昌倬) <czchen@debian.org>
License:   LGPL-3+
0reactions
klencommented, Nov 25, 2021

From the version 8.0.0+ Pylama has the MIT license.

Read more comments on GitHub >

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