Re: DEP-5: Please clarify the meaning of "same licence and share copyright holders"

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

Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes:

> I'm finding it difficult to believe the argument "oh, but this isn't
> going to be mandatory".

I don't know anyone making the argument that there should *never* be a
mandatory machine-parseable ‘debian/copyright’ format. Rather, I see the
argument that we don't *currently* have such a format, and that no such
format should mandatory in the immediate future.

The path to achieving such a format that we can promote as mandatory
must, in my opinion, be through promoting it as an *optional* format,
and improving both the format and the acceptance of it. Such a path, if
it ever to reach a point where we can begin to promote making it
mandatory, necessarily passes through a point where those who don't
follow it voluntarily are in a small minority, and of those who don't
follow it, none have any respectable objection to it.

Any format that doesn't achieve that latter milestone has no business
being promoted as mandatory, IMO, and we're certainly a long way from
that point. So that can easily give the impression, I suppose, that
someone is saying “it's *never* going to be mandatory”, even when
AFAICT no-one has actually said that.

> Please, if you're going to pursue this, make sure it's either
> acceptable to everyone, or not even attempted in the first place.

I'm of the opinion that “acceptable to everyone” can only be
deomstrated by attempting it (even without knowing whether that can be
actieved) and trying to get many people using it for their packages
voluntarily.

-- 
 \        “The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must |
  `\      not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.” |
_o__)                                                 —Albert Einstein |
Ben Finney