Bug#218105: tetex-base: woeful copyright file
James Troup <james@nocrew.org> schrieb:
> frank@kuesterei.ch (Frank Küster) writes:
>
>> I find this quite impractical. It seems to me like following the
>> policy literally instead of following its purpose.
>
> I disagree. The copyright file is not remotely useful unless it lists
> the licenses. In fact it's harmful and misleading if it doesn't (see
> 2 paragraphs below).
[...]
> The reason why I filed this bug is because someone copied some of the
> tetex fonts into a new package and just stuck "GPL" in the copyright
> file, presumably because that's what it said in tetex's copyright
> file. This is obviously wrong since the fonts in question definitely
> aren't under the GPL. In fact even after searching I couldn't find
> what license they're under, and that's what concerns me. Me (and the
> maintainer of this new package) should be able to tell that
> _accurately_ from the copyright file.
I agree with the last sentence. So there's some work to be done to sort
out all the licenses and assign them to the right files.
Still, I don't see why we need to repeat the wording of each license in
the copyright file. And repeating it would be, because in many cases the
license _files_ need to be there in their directory, due to the
licenses.
The Policy doesn't deal at all with packages that contain files with
different copyrights. So it may be argued what we should do. And I think
that it is necessary and important to clearly assign correct copyright
information to individual files, to prevent problems like the one you
described. However, I think that duplicating the information is not
really necessary.
Anyway, I don't think that _this_ discussion is very useful. We'd rather
set out and start sorting the licenses...
>>> | Seminar and KOMA-Script have changed their licenses recently but
>>> | there may still files that refer to their old copyrights. Both are
>>> | copyrighted under the LPPL (LaTeX Project Public License) now. You
>>> | can find the text of the LPPL in the file
>>> | /usr/share/doc/tetex-base/lppl.txt.gz.
>>>
>>> The LPPL should be in the copyright file, not an external one.
You're right - at the moment this is only recommended in the policy for
the licenses in /usr/share/doc/common-licenses.
Bye, Frank
P.S. Excuse me for not Cc-ing you - that's a problem of my mailer, which
didn't honor your Reply-to line.
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
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