diff -rupN devscripts-2.15.9/scripts/licensecheck.pl devscripts-2.15.9-new/scripts/licensecheck.pl
--- devscripts-2.15.9/scripts/licensecheck.pl	2015-10-06 03:00:34.000000000 +0200
+++ devscripts-2.15.9-new/scripts/licensecheck.pl	2015-10-09 12:51:12.425215534 +0200
@@ -157,7 +157,7 @@ use warnings;
 use warnings    qw< FATAL  utf8     >;
 use Encode qw/decode/;
 
-use Dpkg::IPC qw(spawn);
+use IPC::Run qw(run);
 use Getopt::Long qw(:config gnu_getopt);
 use File::Basename;
 
@@ -337,11 +337,7 @@ while (@files) {
 
     # Encode::Guess does not work well, use good old file command to get file encoding
     my $mime;
-    spawn(exec => ['file', '--brief', '--mime', '--dereference', '--', $file],
-          to_string => \$mime,
-          error_to_file => '/dev/null',
-          nocheck => 1,
-          wait_child => 1);
+    run [qw(file --brief --mime --dereference), $file], \undef, \$mime;
     my $charset ;
     if ($mime =~ m/; charset=((?!binary)(?!unknown)[\w-]+)/) {
 	$charset = $1;