licensing question about python-deb-pkg-tools HOT 7 CLOSED

Hi @aovasylenko and thanks for the feedback.

To be honest I didn't think this through enough! Prompted by your question I researched the topic and it seems that by licensing deb-pkg-tools as MIT I'm violating the python-debian GPL2 license. This is rather unfortunate and was never my intention.

So it seems I have two options:

1. Change the license of deb-pkg-tools to GPL2.
2. Remove the python-debian dependency.

Going with the first option isn't necessarily a problem for me because I release what I do as open source software anyway, but I must admit to having a dislike for the viral nature of the GPL. Considering the other option, the only use case for the python-debian dependency is parsing of the deb822 format:

$ grep -r 'from debian'
deb_pkg_tools/control.py:from debian.deb822 import Deb822
deb_pkg_tools/tests.py:from debian.deb822 import Deb822
deb_pkg_tools/package.py:from debian.deb822 import Deb822
deb_pkg_tools/printer.py:from debian.deb822 import Deb822

Given the total scope of deb-pkg-tools this is a rather small bit of functionality, although clearly essential to the whole. Famous last words: It doesn't seem hard to implement deb822 parsing myself based on the specification (which is only 690 words).

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I'm under the impression I may be able to get away with replacing the deb822 parsing based on the python-debian package with email.parser.HeaderParser from the Python standard library. If anyone is reading along and knows I'm wrong then by all means point that out 😇.

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@xolox you can also emulate ini file and parse headers using configparser :)

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Thanks @imanhodjaev for the suggestion, that is indeed another option.

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Status update: I've certainly worked myself into a uncomfortable corner here, because it turns out that deb-pkg-tools integrates with not one but two GPL2 licensed libraries:

• python-apt is used for version comparison.
• python-debian is used for deb822 parsing.

I can't believe I never realized this before 🤦‍♂️. The deb822 parsing seems simple enough to replace but the version comparison is more involved. Of course I can also give in and change the license to GPL2 but this will ripple through the little ecosystem of Python packages that I've developed in the past seven years 😞.

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@xolox btw I created my own parser it should work the same way with archive as deb822 did https://github.com/imanhodjaev/pycran

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I've just released deb-pkg-tools 8.0 which resolves this issue by switching to native (Python) implementations of deb822 parsing and Debian version number comparisons. Thanks for the feedback!

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