On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 11:49:03AM -0600, Steve M. Robbins wrote: > Agreed. The license for using and distributing the files in the > BINARY package is useful and necessary. But I can't imagine that many > binary package users would need the hundreds of copyright statements > from multi-author works like the kernel, gcc, libc, etc. A summary > should be fine and for those who really want the details the source > package exists. Except that the examples you cite are all packages distributed under the GPL or the LGPL, and their *license* requires that we reproduce the copyright statements[1]. > In this light, I don't understand the motivation for "clarifying" > the policy to something that manifestly we're not following. The motivation is to put an end to the contrafactual interpretation of this clause in Policy that Ben Finney continues to advance in discussions on Debian mailing lists. I'm not claiming that there's consensus about what the policy for debian/copyright *should* be, I'm saying that there's consensus about what the current Policy text *means* - at least insofar as it excludes Ben's revisionist interpretation that "copyright and distribution license" is only meant to refer to a license. It's clear that our compliance with this bit of Policy is poor, and it's also clear that there's disagreement about whether it should even be enforced, so that's a conversation that the Project should have - but claims that it never meant copyright notices were supposed to be included in the first place only muddle the discussion. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org [1] GPLv2, §3: "You may copy and distribute the Program in object code under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above [...]"; §1: "You may copy and distribute [...] provided that you [...] conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty"
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature