Hi all, I am seeking clarification how a proper license paragraph for copyright format 1.0 should be written. A while ago I have started to use this format [1] for common licenses when I saw that fellow maintainers did the same. I was recently informed that this format warrants a reject by the FTP team as announced at [2] and [3]. However I am not aware of recent rejected packages due to this kind of notation. I am wondering if those announcements from 2006 are still valid for copyright format 1.0 which seems to contradict [2] and states in [4] "Otherwise, this field should either include the full text of the license(s) or include *a pointer* to the license file under /usr/share/common-licenses." In addition Debian Policy §12.5 states: "Packages distributed under the Apache license (version 2.0), the Artistic license, the GNU GPL (versions 1, 2, or 3), the GNU LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), and the GNU FDL (versions 1.2 or 1.3) should *refer* to the corresponding files under /usr/share/common-licenses,[119] *rather than quoting them* in the copyright file." What do we gain by quoting common licenses in debian/copyright over and over again? Regards, Markus [1] Examples: License: GPL-2+ On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License version 2 can be found in "/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2". License: GPL-2 On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License version 2 can be found in "/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2". License: Apache-2.0 On Debian systems, the complete text of the Apache version 2.0 license can be found in "/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0". [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html [3] http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html [4] https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#license-field
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature