Re: debian/copyright verbosity

[Matthias Julius <lists@julius-net.net>]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes:

> This seems a useful summary:
>
> Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> writes:
>
>> AFAICT it is perfectly acceptable for debian/copyright to collapse
>> those to:
>> 
>> >  Files: *.c
>> >  Copyright: 2006, 2008 Mr. X
>> >  Copyright: 2005 Mr. Y
>> >  License: GPL2+
>> 
>> There is no collapsing of the years - each year is described
>> separately.
>> 
>> The copyright is retained and each file is listed in debian/copyright
>> under the correct licence.
>
> That's pedantically true, perhaps, but only in the sense that I can say
> the entire works of Shakespeare are retained in the keys on a keyboard.
> The relevant question, it seems to me, is whether the information is
> preserved usefully.

It is exactly what you would get if someone would merge the three
files into one.  Suddenly, the copyright statements cover the whole of
the contents of all three files and you couldn't knwow anymore what is
by whom.  Would the copyright statement be less true?

Matthias