Re: Copyright format “License” field: grant of license, license text?

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

Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> writes:

> Quoting Ben Finney (2015-05-20 08:46:44)
> > Is there a place in ‘debian/copyright’ for the text granting license 
> > to the work, separate from the text of the license itself?
> > […]
> >
> >     Files: libquux/*
> >     Copyright: […]
> >     License: GPL-2 or CC-BY-SA-3
> >         You may modify and/or redistribute this work under the terms of
> >         either the GPL version 2 or later, or the Creative Commons
> >         Attribution Share-Alike license version 3.
> > 
> > That makes sense to me: we have the grant of license where it applies to
> > the specific files, and we have the license text itself in a stand-alone
> > paragraph.
> > […]
>
> I find it better to separate verbatim and non-verbatim texts - if for
> nothing else then becaues that has potential for improved
> machine-processing of the files.

Yes, I agree that's a desirable goal.

> I used that pattern in the past - until realizing (thanks to lintian)
> that Copyright format 1.0 (unlike earlier drafts) explicitly forbids
> both referencing and including license text.

Perhaps an update to the copyright format can allow this information to
be captured in a standard machine-parseable way.

> The pattern I use now is by use of self-invented pseudo-fields
> License-in-Comment (for verbatim text forbidden in License field) and
> Comment-in-License (for non-verbatim text commonly expected), like
> this (from libtype-tiny-perl):
>
> > Files: *
> > Copyright: 2012-2014, Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>
> > License: Artistic or GPL-1+
> > Comment:
> >  License:
> >  .
> >  This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under 
> >  the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
> >  .
> >  Comment:
> >  .
> >  Perl 5 is licensed under either the 'Artistic license' or the 'GNU
> >  General Public License' version 1 or later.

I'd like to propose a new field, “License-Grant” (maybe a better name
can be found). The field is optional, and its value is the verbatim text
from the copyright holder, the text that grants some license.

How about this::

    Files: *
    Copyright: 2012-2014, Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>
    License: Artistic or GPL-1+
    License-Grant:
        This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under 
        the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
    Comment:
        Perl 5 is licensed under either the 'Artistic license' or the 'GNU
        General Public License' version 1 or later.

Would that field be a good addition to the copyright format definition?

-- 
 \             “Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to |
  `\   recognize a mistake when you make it again.” —Franklin P. Jones |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney