[CC:ed to debian-legal, for sanity checking] On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 12:47:54PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote: > On 2004-03-06 22:20 -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: > > While the lack of a valid copyright statement within the package is an > > RC bug, I don't think there's any legal basis for claiming the upstream > > source needs to include a copy of the license before we can distribute > > it, so long as there is a clear statement from upstream that that's what > > the license is. The contents of /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright can > > easily be fixed up to reflect this. > Well, I can alter debian/copyright to say that the website contains a > note that it is BSD, but I doubt that this had any legal impact. If > the website is (temporarily or permenantly) down, then no sign of a > copyright can be seen _anywhere_. So I think I must not close the RC > bug if I altered debian/copyright, right? Also, Policy 2.3 forbids > distribution of a software without a copyright statement. If the website is down, how would anyone be able to verify that your .orig.tar.gz is pristine source, either? My guess is that they would not. The legal difference between a copy of the license included in the tarball by upstream, and a copy of the license copied from the website into debian/copyright by the maintainer, is therefore nil in such a case; either the copyright holder acknowledges the validity of the license, and there is no problem, or the copyright holder claims they did not issue a license, in which case you have the same defense against claims of willful copyright infringement. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you update debian/copyright to reflect the actual license of this work, regardless of whether that license is currently included in the tarball, and close the RC bug accordingly. > When the current postgresql finally goes into sarge (I will make an > updated upload today or tomorrow), it will be possible to remove > pgeasy. I pinged its upstream author (who promised to change that > weeks ago) and will do it again, but in the light of the upcoming > freeze I will ask for removing pgeasy if upstream does not release an > update. Would you agree to this? I don't understand this. Currently, the pgeasy source package *only* exists in unstable. If you want to remove pgeasy, why would this need to wait for a new postgresql package in testing? And is this trivially-solvable RC bug your only reason for requesting removal? You are the maintainer, so it's your prerogative to request the package's removal, but from the bug log I can't see any legal reasons why that would be necessary. Regards, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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