A command line tool which lists the licenses of all installed packages in a Debian-based system (like Ubuntu)
Almost every package in Debian contains a copyright file in
/usr/share/doc/<packagename>/copyright. Unfortunately, this file was
initially a plain-text file without a specified format, not even specified
what it should contain. In 2012, Debian tried to change this by specifying
a machine-readable format (http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/). Until now,
this specification is not a requirement, and many developers don't care
about it, so that reading out the licenses of all packages is still a pain.
But in business, there is a regular demand for such license information.
A google search showed me that until now nobody tried to parse these files or found another approach to lists the licenses:
- http://askubuntu.com/questions/247757/how-do-you-find-the-licenses-for-everything-installed-on-your-system/620069#620069
- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1884753/license-info-of-a-deb-package#1884785
dpkg-licenses tries to read these well-formatted licenses file and has multiple fallbacks for the case that it isn't well-formatted. You can probably imagine how hard it is to read a license from a unformatted plain-text file.
Feel free to try this tool. Any suggestions are welcome.
$ ./dpkg-licenses
St Name Version Arch Description Licenses
-- ---- ------- ---- ----------- --------
ii accountsservice 0.6.35-0ubuntu7.2 amd64 query and manipulate user account informatio GPL-2+ GPL-3+
ii acl 2.2.52-1 amd64 Access control list utilities GPL LGPL-2.1
ii acpi-support 0.142 amd64 scripts for handling many ACPI events GPL-2+
ii acpid 1:2.0.21-1ubuntu2 amd64 Advanced Configuration and Power Interface e GPL-2
ii adduser 3.113+nmu3ubuntu3 all add and remove users and groups GPL-2
ii alsa-base 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4 all ALSA driver configuration files GPL-2
ii alsa-utils 1.0.27.2-1ubuntu2 amd64 Utilities for configuring and using ALSA GPL-2
ii anacron 2.3-20ubuntu1 amd64 cron-like program that doesn't go by time GPL-2
To get parsable format without shortened fields, use --csv (-c) flag:
$ ./dpkg-licenses -c
"St","Name","Version","Arch","Description","Licenses"
"ii","accountsservice","0.6.35-0ubuntu7.2","amd64","query and manipulate user account information","GPL-2+ GPL-3+"
"ii","acl","2.2.52-1","amd64","Access control list utilities","GPL LGPL-2.1"
"ii","acpid","1:2.0.21-1ubuntu2","amd64","Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon","GPL-2"
...
The output quality on an average workspace Ubuntu installation looks like this:
$ ./dpkg-licenses >output.txt 2>errors.txt
$ cat output.txt | cut -c135- | wc -l
2230
$ cat output.txt | cut -c135- | grep unknown | wc -l
228
Interpretation: 2230 installed packages, success rate of tool is 1−(228/2230) = 90%
However, there is still a lot of garbage:
ii autoconf 2.69-6 all automatic configure script builder GFDL-1.3+ GPL-2+ GPL-2+ with Autoconf exception GPL-3+ GPL-3+ with Autoconf exception GPL-3+ with Texinfo exception MIT-X-Consortium no-modification other permissive permissive-long-disclaimer permissive-short-disclaimer permissive-without-disclaimer permissive-without-notices-or-disclaimer
ii bc 1.06.95-8ubuntu1 amd64 GNU bc arbitrary precision calculator language GPL-2.0+ GPL-2.0+ with Texinfo exception permissive X11 and public-domain
ii cron 3.0pl1-124ubuntu2 amd64 process scheduling daemon Artistic GPL-2+ ISC Paul Vixie's license Paul Vixie's license and GPL-2+ and ISC
ii fonts-opensymbol 2:102.6+LibO4.2.8-0ubuntu3 all OpenSymbol TrueType font Apache-2.0 BSD-3-clause BSD-4-clause CDDL-1.0 CDDL-1.0 | GPPL-2 GPL GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-2+ GPL-2 | LGPL-2.1 | MPL-1.1 LGPL LGPL-2+ LGPL2+ LGPL-2.1 LGPL-2 | Apache-2.0 LGPL-3 LGPL | Apache-2.0 MIT MIT/X MPL-1.1 MPL-1.1 | GPL-2 | LGPL-2 MPL-1.1 | GPL-3+ | LGPL-3+ MPL-1.1 | LGPL-2.1 MPL 1.1 | LGPL-2+ | GPL-2+ MPL-2.0 other PSF-2 public-domain W3C Zlib
ii ghostscript 9.10~dfsg-0ubuntu10.4 amd64 interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF AFPL AFPL~AFPL AGPL-3+ Apache-2.0 BSD-3-Clause BSD-3-Clause~Adobe Expat Expat~Ghostgum Expat~SunSoft Expat~SunSoft with SunSoft exception GAP~configure GPL GPL-2+ GPL-2+ or AFPL~AFPL GPL-2+ with Autoconf exception GPL-2+ with Libtool exception GPL-2+~you GPL-2+~you or AFPL GPL-2+~you or AFPL~AFPL GPL-3+ GPL-3+~Artifex GPL~CUPS GPL~LIPS GPL~URW GPL~URW with font exception icclib LGPL-2.1+ LGPL-2.1+ and LGPL-2.1+~program-in-file LGPL-2.1~pcl3 LGPL-2.1+~program-in-file NTP~Lucent NTP~Open NTP~WSU other PD Unicode UNKNOWN ZLIB
Copyright 2016 Daniel Alder, https://github.com/daald
dpkg-licenses was written by Daniel Alder, https://github.com/daald
dpkg-licenses is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
dpkg-licenses is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with dpkg-licenses. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.