Re: modified email address in debian/copyright file

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

Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> writes:

> Whether or not it its an requirement to be able to contact the
> author, doesnt have anything to do with obfuscating the email
> address or not. (Assuming its not obfuscated beyond recognitition.)

That just pushes the question to a different location, without
answering it: what do we accept as a valid email address, and what do
we categorise as so far obfuscated that it's no longer useful.

It also puts one in the untenable position of having to make
*individual* decisions on every case of obfuscation: is this one too
far munged? Is that one? On what do I base my judgement of "too far"?

I argue that the only fair place to draw the line is "valid RFC 2821
email address". The alternative is to leave it to ongoing subjective
judgement of unspecified Debian parties as to which addresses make
sense or not — or to avoid the question of valid contact information
altogether, as seems to be current practice.

> (*) BTW, I dont have an example at hand, but I'm pretty sure I have
> seen code in Debian written by anonymous and friends. You can't
> contact them either.

I don't doubt that's true. It's a regrettable situation, because the
copyright statement for that person's work is unverifiable even at the
time the code is accepted into Debian, let alone later in the future.

-- 
 \       Eccles: "I just saw the Earth through the clouds!"  Lew: "Did |
  `\     it look round?"  Eccles: "Yes, but I don't think it saw me."  |
_o__)                          -- The Goon Show, _Wings Over Dagenham_ |
Ben Finney