Re: debian/copyright verbosity

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

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> If we wanted to be absolutely faithful in preserving all information
> about upstream copyright and licensing in the debian/copyright file,
> we could just put a tarball of the entire upstream source in there.

That, too, would IMO fail the “usefully preserve” test. I had believed
the ‘debian/copyright’ file is for preserving that information in a
useful summary for those who want to know the copyright status of the
work. The original source tarball is not such a useful summary.

> The conversation is all about where to draw the line between obviously
> absurd completeness and insufficient data.

Yes, that is the core of the issue. How do we know when we've resolved
it? I hope the answer isn't “when we run out of breath discussing it”.

-- 
 \            “All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.” |
  `\                                       —_Timequake_, Kurt Vonnegut |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney