Re: Bug#56166: base-files: copyright in motd is outdated (fwd)
On Jan 25, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> I think it is even misleading. The major parts of Debian are not by
> Debian or SPI, but by other folks like GNU and Linus. We should
> probably refer to the individual copyright notices instead.
The remainder of /etc/motd implies this, by referring the reader to
/usr/share/doc/{$package}/copyright.
Perhaps a better phrasing would be:
Most of the programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system were
originally written by people outside the project, but are freely
redistributable; the authorship and exact distribution terms for each
program should be described in the individual files named
/usr/share/doc/*/copyright or /usr/doc/*/copyright.
In any event, U.S. law at least acknowledges the concept of a
"collection copyright." To cite another example: M$ claims copyright
for Windows, even though significant parts of Windows are copyrighted
at least in part by others (Intel [Defrag], UC-Berkeley [TCP/IP
networking commands], etc.) So I think we are well within our rights
to claim copyright over our work, which is in assembling and
maintaining the distribution as a whole.
Chris
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