(debian-policy.info)Copyright considerations

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2.3 Copyright considerations
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Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its distribution
license in the file ‘/usr/share/doc/package/copyright’.

Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright
information, unless its distribution license explicitly permits this
information to be excluded from distributions of binaries built from the
source.  In such cases, a verbatim copy of its copyright information
should normally still be included, but need not be if creating and
maintaining a copy of that information involves significant time and
effort.

See Note: Copyright information. for further details.

We reserve the right to restrict files from being included anywhere in
our archives if

   - their use or distribution would break a law,

   - there is an ethical conflict in their distribution or use,

   - we would have to sign a license for them, or

   - their distribution would conflict with other project policies.

Programs whose authors encourage the user to make donations are fine for
the main distribution, provided that the authors do not claim that not
donating is immoral, unethical, illegal or something similar; in such a
case they must go in `non-free'.

Packages whose copyright permission notices (or patent problems) do not
even allow redistribution of binaries only, and where no special
permission has been obtained, must not be placed on the Debian FTP site
and its mirrors at all.

Note that under international copyright law (this applies in the United
States, too), `no' distribution or modification of a work is allowed
without an explicit notice saying so.  Therefore a program without a
copyright notice `is' copyrighted and you may not do anything to it
without risking being sued!  Likewise if a program has a copyright
notice but no statement saying what is permitted then nothing is
permitted.

Many authors are unaware of the problems that restrictive copyrights (or
lack of copyright notices) can cause for the users of their
supposedly-free software.  It is often worthwhile contacting such
authors diplomatically to ask them to modify their license terms.
However, this can be a politically difficult thing to do and you should
ask for advice on the ‘debian-legal’ mailing list first, as explained
below.

When in doubt about a copyright, send mail to
<debian-legal@lists.debian.org>.  Be prepared to provide us with the
copyright statement.  Software covered by the GPL, public domain
software and BSD-like copyrights are safe; be wary of the phrases
“commercial use prohibited” and “distribution restricted”.