Re: Sponsorship requirements and copyright files

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> If the upstream license doesn't require that we preserve the
> copyright statement (or if upstream doesn't have them), I'm not sure
> we need to be requiring that they be collected into
> debian/copyright.

I am working from the assumption that we need, at least in principle,
to maintain an accurate knowledge of the copyright status of the works
we distribute in Debian. I base that assumption on the necessity of
that information when evaluating claims (made against the Debian
project) of copyright infringement in those works.

If ignorance of the copyright status of a work were a valid defense,
that would certainly obviate the burden for a distributor to actively
maintain accurate copyright status knowledge in the works they
distribute. I don't think that's true, though.

-- 
 \       “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe |
  `\   or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” —Arthur C. Clarke, |
_o__)                                                             1999 |
Ben Finney