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how to mention GPL in the debian/copyright file



Hello,

I have a question about how to write the debian/copyright file
for packages which are distributed under the GPL.

Currently the debian/copyright file of chbg contains the paragraph

    Chbg is copyrigthed by Ondrejicka Stefan (ondrej@idata.sk).  It is
    license under the GPL.  On Debian systems, the complete text of the
    GNU General Public License can be found in the
    /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL file.

This is there to satisfy the requirement of policy section 12.5:

    Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its
    copyright and distribution license in the file
    /usr/share/doc/package/copyright. This file must neither be
    compressed nor be a symbolic link.

    [...]

    Packages distributed under the [...] GNU GPL [...], should refer to
    the files [...] /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, [...]
    respectively, rather than quoting them in the copyright file.

Recently Justin Pryzby filed bug #290087 against chbg, claiming that
the debian/copyright file should instead contain "the 3 paragraphs as
found in /usr/share/debhelper/dh_make/native/copyright", which turn out
to be

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this package; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
    02111-1307, USA.

My questions:

1) Is it required to include the above three paragraphs into the
debian/copyright file?

2) In case it is not required, is it for some other reason preferable
to include them?

Thank you very much in advance,
Jochen


PS.: I am not subscribed to debian-devel, so please Cc: me on replies.
-- 
http://seehuhn.de/

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