Re: DEP-5: Please clarify the meaning of "same licence and share copyright holders"
3On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 04:16:42PM +0300, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> That's the killer point we should concentrate on. I know commercial
> derivatives of Debian can benefit from machine-readable debian/copyright
> files: their customers may need to get a list of licenses used in the
> (subset) of packages the derivative provides them, and this would get
> easier with DEP5. For Debian itself, this is not sufficient reason to
> bother.
There are already a significant number of people within Debian who are
finding value in the idea of a structured debian/copyright format. I for
one have no intention of spending my time trying persuade people opposed to
a machine-readable file that this is something they need - as long as
debian/copyright *doesn't* have a defined structure in policy, individual
maintainers are free to format the file however they want to, including in
a manner that happens to be machine-parseable, and to the extent that people
choose to do that, there's a benefit (assuming we can finally get a
solidified spec).
I'm happy to discuss what the file format should look like for those who are
using it, but I'm not going to engage people who are hostile to the concept
because I just don't care that much whether they use it. For values of
"Debian" meaning "some subset of Debian maintainers", it's clear that Debian
has already found sufficient reason to use this. For values of "Debian"
meaning "the whole of Debian, as agreed through Debian Policy", I don't
think that's even an interesting goal for the foreseeable future.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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