Quoting Steve Robbins (2017-12-16 05:35:25) > Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org> writes: >> Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> writes: >>> On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 at 23:10:51 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: >>>> expecting to find “complete copyright holder information” such that >>>> we can be confident it *is* complete, solely in the upstream source >>>> is a folly, in my experience. >>> >>> Given that, on what basis can a user of the package gain value from >>> our claim that the complete list of copyright holders is present in >>> debian/copyright? >> >> Because that file is typically a record of a specific effort to >> *acquire* that information, and to document it for people who are >> careful about the provenance and grant of license in the work. > > That description doesn't match my experience. Nor does it match what > the Policy Manual requests: "Every package must be accompanied by a > verbatim copy of its copyright information and distribution license". > > I have a very hard time believing that debian/copyright "typically" > contains anything other than a scraping of upstream source files. I > take the existence of various tools to semi-automate this task as > evidence in support of my thesis. In my experience the "specific effort" is exactly the reason for only *semi*-automated scraping. >> The distinction I'm drawing is in response to proposals in this >> thread, to declare the record in ‘debian/copyright’ to be obsolete. >> Some proposals have advocated that we rely on finding that >> information solely in the upstream work. > > I'm advocating it because in practice that's what is happening -- it > is a "verbatim copy of ... copyright information". However, it's not > worth my time to collate that from 55000 files. The source package > has the verbatim copy already ... we just need to point to it! How do you propose we "point to it" in a way that ensures we are in fact pointing to the legal statements - i.e. not missing some of them (which might be further down in the code) and not bogusly pointing to code lacking some or all of the needed legal statements? If it is "not worth [your] time" to cover _all_ sources for the project you are maintaining then perhaps you should team up with someone who does find it worthwhile to do that part of the packaging maintenance - because that part of the packaging maintenance is not optional in Debian! - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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