Re: debian/copyright and actual copyrights

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> writes:

> Yaroslav Halchenko <debian <at> onerussian.com> writes:
> 
> > 1. Do we have to list all copyright holders + licenses per each
> > piece of software distributed within a package?
> 
> [...] we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of files with
> differing licenses and a package which is at the heart of our
> documentation building processes [...]

The number of files doesn't directly affect the size of the
'debian/copyright' file (though it does directly affect the work
required to gather the information for that file).

What does affect the size of 'debian/copyright' is: How many
*different* copyright statements are there on the files in the work?
How many different sets of license terms?

-- 
 \              "Programs must be written for people to read, and only |
  `\        incidentally for machines to execute." —Abelson & Sussman, |
_o__)              _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_ |
Ben Finney