Re: Has Copyright summarizing outlived its usefulness?

[Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org>]

Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

> From what I've seen of the ftp review process, the file-by-file
> information is invaluable to ftpmaster review. As in, the ftpmaster
> review would probably be impractical without it. ftpmaster review
> necessarily focuses on the contents of the source package.

It is also invaluable, from what I can tell, as a common reference point
between what the *actual* copyright information of the work is –
something that can only be inferred, and that can change as the work
changes – versus what the maintainer *has inferred* as the copyright
information of the work.

Without that, it's very hard to talk about differences between what the
maintainer thinks is the case, versus what information is actually in
the upstream work.

> That the information for ftpmaster review has ended up being shipped
> as the user-facing copyright notice in the binary is arguably not
> ideal for some of the reasons we have explored here.

Agreed. Though I don't know of a better way, today, to serve the
purposes described above.

> So we go with what we have, and what we already have a mechanism for
> auditing.

Thanks for expressing this succinctly, Ian.

-- 
 \         “It’s a great idea to come in unencumbered by dogma but you |
  `\        can’t also be unencumbered by evidence.” —Darren Saunders, |
_o__)                                                       2015-12-02 |
Ben Finney