Debian forks cdrecord
The short version is that cdrecord tools is apparently comprised of source files and a build environement sporting a mix of licenses, the specific combination thereof the Debian team deemed as unacceptable, because in their opinion it would prevent them from distributing binaries for the cdrecord package.
There’s an amusing thread on /. about whose interpretation of the license is right or wrong - among other topics. Most posters miss the point entirely, though. It doesn’t matter whose interpretation of the legal situation is correct - the only issue that matters is whether or not the author of cdrecord can convince the relevant people at Debian that they can legally distribute his software; failing that, they had no choice but to remedy the problem, which in this case led to the creation of a fork from the last unencumbered version.
Interestingly enough, Fedora reached a similar conclusion.
There’s precedent for this pattern, other “characters” have been deemed to difficult to work with, to the point where it’s less painful to rewrite or fork their code. It will happen again.