debian/copyright for Apache Commons packages

Emmanuel Bourg ebourg at apache.org
Fri Jun 12 11:26:27 UTC 2009


Hi,

I noticed some inconsistencies in the copyright files of the Apache 
Commons packages:

- Some packages still have the old Apache Software License 1.1, but they 
have been released with the AL 2.0. It affects the following packages: 
dbcp, codec, discovery, fileupload, jxpath, lang, validator. Commons EL 
also has the 1.1 license, but it was never released with the 2.0 
license, so it can remain as is.

- The mention "All rights reserved" can be found in libcommons-cli, but 
it was never released with this mention upstream. IANAL but I can't see 
how an open source project can be released with this mention, if the 
license grants some fundamental rights you can't tell all the rights are 
reserved. The same mention appears in other java packages, but I'm not 
familiar with them.

- lintian seems to complain when the full license text is appended to 
debian/copyright. Some packages simply refer to the file in 
/usr/share/common-licenses/. Should this be generalized, or is this a 
topic still open for discussion?

Emmanuel Bourg



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