Re: How (not) to write copyright files - take two

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:

> Scripsit Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org>
>> On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Henning Makholm wrote:
>
>>> > And we ignore any (C) FSF in generated autofoo stuff.
>
>>> The generated autofoo stuff does not end up in the .deb, so the
>>> copyright file needs not describe it.
>
>> It often ends up in the source package (depending when you run the
>> autotools), which we do distribute.
>
> But is the Debian copyright file supposed to describe the source
> package? 

I think so.

> Not according to my understanding; the source package already
> includes the various upstream copyright messages in their original
> positions.

First of all, that's not always true: Some upstreams don't properly
write their copyright files; or they include source files from other
projects, but copy only "the interesting files", in other words they
don't include the other project's copyright file.  Have a look at
#218105 which I'm currently working on...

Second, in most cases if you're interested in the copyright and
licensing of a piece of software, you're interested in the sources,
anyway. 

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)