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 (2015-05-21 02:14:43)
> > 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?
> […]
> > Perhaps an update to the copyright format can allow this information
> > to be captured in a standard machine-parseable way.
>
> Yes. I believe the formally correct approach is to file a bugreport
> against debian-copyright.

Do you mean ‘debian-policy’? (There is no ‘debian-copyright’ package
known to the BTS.)

> Will you do it?  I find you far better at phrasing things than me.

I'll attempt it. Thanks for your confidence :-)

> > 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::

Since the license grant is prior (conceptually, and also most often
literally in the text) to the license definition, I will propose the
“License-Grant” with examples that always show it between “Copyright”
and “License” fields::

    Files: *
    Copyright: 2012-2014, Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>
    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.
    License: Artistic or GPL-1+
    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?
>
> Looks good to me.

I have reported bug#786470 <URL:https://bugs.debian.org/786470> to that
effect. Please find fault or suggest improvements there.

-- 
 \       “Some people have a problem, and they think “I know, I'll use |
  `\     Perl!”. Now they have some number of problems but they're not |
_o__)     sure whether it's a string or an integer.” —Benno Rice, 2011 |
Ben Finney