Re: Sponsorship requirements and copyright files

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Peter Palfrader <weasel@debian.org> writes:

> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009, Noah Slater wrote:
> 
> > Listing the licences (not necessarily copyright holders) in a
> > machine readable format would allow lintian checks to be
> > developed, and maybe even automatic license compatibility checks
> > to be performed.
> 
> The way this process should work is that you (or somebody) writes
> those tools.

In the absence of a format? Please remember that, for most of its
lifetime, the proposed format has been undergoing changes that would
invalidate such tools; it's still a draft proposal.

> Then, if DDs see that those tools are useful they will convert their
> debian/copyright files to take advantage of those tools all by
> themselves. No one will have to force them.

Certainly, no one has proposed forcing use of the machine-parseable
format in anything like the foreseeable future. One constant on the
page for the draft proposal is the statement that it is *not* yet a
proposal to change policy.

To repeat what Noah has said elsewhere: Please separate any talk of
policy requirements about “what information must go into the
‘debian/copyright’ file”, from work on making that file
machine-parseable. The two issues are orthogonal.

-- 
 \       “The best is the enemy of the good.” —Voltaire, _Dictionnaire |
  `\                                                    Philosophique_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney