Re: copyright precision
On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 07:45:16PM +0200, Thorsten Alteholz wrote:
> So if there is a problem, shouldn't we start to solve it instead of just
> ignoring it? Wouldn't it be better to set high standards instead of being
> guided by convenience?
Documenting problems only makes sense when there is a realistic chance
to get them fixed. If we end up letting them linger, the effort of
reporting them is wasted.
I'm not meaning to imply that we shouldn't fix this. I'm just seeing
that few people are interested in actually doing what needs doing.
And then I can totally understand people who are not interested in doing
so, because I'm not too interested either. I've repeatedly seen how the
inability of building Debian packages from source has limited my
freedom, so I'm more interested in that related aspect.
Instead of seeing higher standards being applied, I'd like to see better
tools that support meeting those standards. If generating augmented
copyright files for binary packages is the way to go, there should be a
standard, debhelper-supported way of doing so.
> > > IMO dh_doxygen should sort this out.
> >
> > I see one person calling for this and no consensus.
>
> Isn't policy enough consensus?
No. Policy is vague and its interpretation is not even unanimous within
the ftp team on these matters. Also policy is supposed to document
practice, so it can go out of sync with reality. When a significant
fraction of the archive is wrong, the question is whether in reality
policy is wrong.
And again, I'm not opposed to actually fixing this. An earlier version
of dh_doxygen was generating a substitution variable for Built-Using. I
just removed it, because there was no consensus for doing so at that
time.
Thus far I see neither consensus, nor people driving improved copyright
documentation. Instead I see Andreas' work being blocked[1] based on
rules that aren't met by the rest of the archive either. And that's sad.
Helmut
[1] There is no implication of bad intentions here.
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