copyright precision
Dropping most of the Cc list as we move to general handling of similar
issues.
On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 01:30:39PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> ISTM that in situations where Built-Using is arguably relevant, there
> is also often a requirement to make sure the copyright file(s) of the
> .deb(s) contains information from the allegedly-Built-Using source
> packages.
Your expectation is so far removed from our current practise that I
hardly see where to start. There are few packages that actually generate
a copyright file for binary packages. The common case is to just copy
the source copyright. Even for packages with Built-Using this is rare.
By your measure, bash-static, busybox-static, cdebootstrap-static,
...[1] would all be rc buggy.
But it is actually worse than that. We don't even list copyright for
what is contained in binary packages. For instance, libjs-sphinxdoc
contains css3-mediaqueries, which is mainly written by Wouter van der
Graaf. There is no mention of his name in libjs-sphinxdoc's copyright
(neither source nor binary) though. Again, I don't mean to blame
individual packages or maintainers. This really is a common theme.
It seems that doing this license tracking properly is beyond our
capacity. And I actually see more pressing issues, such as actually
building stuff from source instead of reusing pre-generated configure
scripts or pre-minified javascript that nobody knows how to regenerate
(e.g. perl's Configure, but again this really is a common theme).
It seems to me that we are creating a gap between high quality niche
packages and popular packages in bad shape.
> IMO dh_doxygen should sort this out.
I see one person calling for this and no consensus.
On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 13:33:16PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> 7 (lack of authorship and copright info in .deb for a file contained
> in the .deb) is a release-critical bug and a proper reason for the
> package to be REJECTED.
By this measure, we'd gain hundreds of rc-bugs (at least all of
Doxygen's build-rdeps). Please remember to consult d-devel@l.d.o before
your mass bug filing.
Helmut
[1] I looked alphabetically for easy to validate targets. Not meaning to
blame these. It really is common.
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