Re: Re: Consultation on license documents

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org>]

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刘涛 dijo [Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 10:49:34AM +0800]:
> Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I originally wanted to say that every
> software package in Debian will have a "copyright" document, but the
> input method was mistakenly typed as copyleft. Because I found that
> every package in Debian will have a "copyright" document, but not
> every package has a "license.txt" document. So I want to confirm
> that we users want to know the license usage of the software
> package, which document should prevail. In addition, when the
> license information declared in the two documents is inconsistent,
> how should we deal with it, and which document shall prevail.

My first answer to this question was "/usr/share/doc/PKGNAME/copyright
is authoritative and should prevail", but on a second thought, I must
agree with Theodore Ts'o, who rightfully said:

    I am not a lawyer, and even if I were a lawyer, I am not *your*
    lawyer, so I am not in a position to give legal advice.  If you
    want an authoratative opinion, you will need to find a lawyer who
    is willing to give you formal legal advice, and they will very ask
    to be paid in order to give you that opinion.

So... There is no one-size-fits-all answer here.

But if you find a /usr/share/doc/PKGNAME/copyright document being
inconsistent with a license.txt file (or with any licensing header
included as part of any of the files, or whatever like that), please
file it as a high-severity bug!

Greetings,