Re: Sponsorship requirements and copyright files
On 2009-03-19, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>> It is a too complex, overengineered solution to a very minor issue.
>
> I find it very surprising that someone can be a Debian developer and
> consider copyright of works to be ???a very minor issue??? in Debian.
> Perhaps I've misinterpreted this statement. What do you mean by that?
PLease read again. I'm not anywhere discussing the *content* of the
copyright file, but the *format*.
one of the issues the format should solve is "automatic detection of
license incompabilities", which is not a big issue today.
>> It is not easy readables for humans
>> It is ugly
>
> Can you point to a proposal (on another page) for an alternate format
> that you feel passes these tests?
I like the current "free for all" format, where you can adapt the format
to the requirements and differences of the packages.
>> Too time consuming to write and check
>
> I find the structure makes it far easier to write and check than the
> free-form chaos of many existing files. What would you have removed
> from the format to reduce the time for writing and checking it?
Try do it with a bit larger package. it does not scale.
I agree that it might not be a big difference on small packages with a
few copyright holders and a simple license situation, but we should
*not* advocate ways of doing things that doesn't scale.
A simple package with a 4 copyright holders and everything gpl takes a
few minutes with "free text format" and maybe 10% more if there is a
specific format to follow.
I think when uploading kde4.2 to unstable, at least 60 developer hours
was put into working on the copyright files, even with loads of help
from various scripts.
Is this the right way to spend developer time? as far as I see it,
developer time is our most valuable resource, and should not be treated
as such.
>> No real gain.
>
> This allows any proposed gains to then be excluded under ???not a real
> gain???, of course [0]. What gains have you seen proposed, that are not
> real gains by your standard? What *would* be a real gain by your
> standard?
A real gain would be something that made tedious work less tedious.
Copyright files are tedious to write. making it more complex will not
improve this.
- and patches to kdebase-workspace/experimental copyright file is most
welcome if it is incorrect.
/Sune
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