Re: Bug#561494: Fwd: devref and policy should agree on where to document tarball repacking
Thibaut Paumard <mlotpot.news@free.fr> writes:
>> 2) most free licenses require to clearly specify modifications to
>> licensed work. Deleting files is to be considered a modification of the
>> source package, which _is_ the licensed work.
>>
>> By the same token, I am starting to realise that we should also
>> certainly specify in debian/copyright that some files have been
>> patched. If using a patch system, the files are not modified in the
>> source package, but still the binary packages are built with or even
>> ship modified files. Also the details of the modifications belong
>> elsewhere, I think debian/copyright should clearly state that our
>> package is derived work, not the original, unmodified work.
Our historical stance on this part of the problem is that debian/changelog
is sufficient documentation for what changes have been made to the package
(although that does imply that one needs to document in debian/changelog
what changes you're making).
This is consistent with the FSF's stance that the ChangeLog file is
sufficient to satisfy the GPL requirement that changes be documented
(since the GPL is one of the licenses with the most restrictive
requirements about change notices).
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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