I just switched from a CentOS 8.3 installation to Debian 10. Once I had my code development setup in place again I gathered the license details and noticed a significant difference in licenses for seamingly common packages.
Commands used to extract these licenses:
CentOS 8.3: rpm -qa --qf "%{name}-%{version}: %{license}\n"
Debian 10: dpkg-licenses (https://github.com/daald/dpkg-licenses)
Examples of differences:
CentOS 8.3: accountsservice-0.6.50: GPLv3+
Debian 10: accountsservice-0.6.45-2: GPL-2+ GPL-3+
CentOS 8.3: binutils-2.30: GPLv3+
Debian 10: binutils-2.31.1-16: GFDL GPL LGPL
CentOS 8.3: bluez-5.52: GPLv2+
Debian 10: bluez-5.50-1.2~deb10u1: Apache-2.0 BSD-2-clause Expat GPL-2 GPL-2+ LGPL-2.1+
CentOS 8.3: bzip2-1.0.6: BSD
Debian 10: bzip2-1.0.6-9.2~deb10u1: BSD-variant GPL-2
CentOS 8.3: gnupg2-2.2.20: GPLv3+
Debian 10: gnupg2-2.2.12-1+deb10u1: BSD-3-clause CC0-1.0 Expat GPL-3+ GPL-3+ or BSD-3-clause LGPL-2.1+ LGPL-3+ permissive RFC-Reference TinySCHEME
CentOS 8.3: gzip-1.9: GPLv3+ and GFDL
Debian 10: gzip-1.9-3: GPL
CentOS 8.3: iptables-1.8.4: GPLv2 and Artistic 2.0 and ISC
Debian 10: iptables-1.8.2-4: Artistic-2 custom GPL-2 GPL-2+
CentOS 8.3: lsof-4.93.2: zlib and Sendmail and LGPLv2+
Debian 10: lsof-4.91+dfsg-1: BSD-4-clause GPL-2+ LGPL-2+ Purdue sendmail
CentOS 8.3: openssh-server-8.0p1: BSD
Debian 10: openssh-server-1:7.9p1-10+deb10u2: Beer-ware BSD-2-clause BSD-3-clause Expat-with-advertising-restriction Mazieres-BSD-style OpenSSH Powell-BSD-style public-domain
CentOS 8.3: python3-idna-2.5: BSD and Python and Unicode
Debian 10: python3-idna-2.6-1: BSD-3-clause PSF-2 Unicode
Can somebody explain why there are big difference in the licenses for seemingly identical software packages that you would expect to originate from a common source?
I just picked a number of examples. There are also packages with identical licenses. My expectation is that these licenses are fairly stable over time.