On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 11:23:10AM -0500, Steve Greenland wrote: > On 17-Jul-02, 15:45 (CDT), Gergely Nagy <algernon@bonehunter.rulez.org> wrote: > > README.Debian vs debian/copyright > > ================================= > > Some of the packages have information in README.Debian that belongs to > > debian/copyright. For example, the name of the maintainer who put the > > package together. (Policy says that debian/copyright should mention > > the Debian maintainer) > I know this is policy, but am I the only one who thinks this is > completely bass-ackwards? If the debian/copyright (or more accurately, > /usr/share/doc/foo/copyright) was *only* the license, then I could > just cp the license from upstream (assuming it's not one of the common > licenses), and put all the debian specific stuff in "README.Debian", where > it would actually make sense... If you've made significant changes to the software in the course of packaging, then chances are that you as a packager have a copyright in the resulting derivative work. Also, the maintainer scripts themselves might also be large enough to themselves be considered copyrightable; if so, they might theoretically also be worth borrowing from, in which case it would be nice to know where to look for the license (if applicable). In short, README.Debian is for information that a user may want to know about the Debian-specific aspects of a package. OTOH, copyright is for information that matters a good deal to other developers and distributors, but has little impact on a user's ability to make use of the software. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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