[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Let’s turn DEP5 into something useful



Hi,

currently, DEP5 is not, contrary to what the name says, about a
“machine-readable debian/copyright”. It is about providing a much
broader amount of licensing information on our source packages.

The real problem with DEP5 is not the format (which is not worse for a
small package than the current one), it is with the unrealistic amount
of information that it requires to fill and maintain.


So, how about dropping entirely anything that’s related to files and
only keep the amount of information we are requiring now?  I feel sorry
for the giant bikeshedding thread about spaces and commas, but it is not
getting us anywhere.


Source: foo
Authors: John Doe
         Jane Toe
# Some comment
Copyright: © 2008 John Doe
           © 2009 Initrode, Inc.
# Actually I don’t think we should include detailed copyright
# information, but that’s another story.

License: GPL-2+
   License blurb.

Some comments about the GPL applying to the binaries, the libraries
being MPL.

License: MPL
   MPL text.


It doesn’t look like too much work to switch an existing file to this
format, it could even be partly automated.
It is still human-readable.
It could reasonably be made mandatory after some time.
It brings grossly the same advantages as the current DEP5 proposal.
It doesn’t cause any problems with commas, spaces or other characters
that can appear in filenames.

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'   “I recommend you to learn English in hope that you in
  `-     future understand things”  -- Jörg Schilling

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Ceci est une partie de message =?ISO-8859-1?Q?num=E9riquement?= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?_sign=E9e?=


Reply to: