On 2017-12-08 01:42 +0100, Markus Koschany wrote: > > Why don't we add all DFSG-free licenses to /usr/share/common-licenses or > /usr/share/free-licenses instead? I would second this. It seems odd that we only have a small subset in common-licences so I often end up finding/copying in a copy to the copyright file by hand. This seems like makework. I do still think the copyright file is useful. Not so much in itself when finished, but the process of generating it is invaluable to find out what sort of cruft has got into a project, how many licences it has, what craziness upstream has indulged in, and so-on. It's a tiresome process I have done way too many times, but maybe half the time it reveals unclear things that need checking with the authors, or multiple licences, or non-free bits, or that in fact (a new) upstream has unilaterally changed the licence and that that version is undistributable, and I should go back to the original. So, no, the file has not outlived its usefulness, because of the process it represents, but I do agree that listing enormous numbers of contributors (a list which will grow) is not very useful, and sometimes small numbers of contributors too, for the reasons Adam elaborated. We could perhaps think about making more use of the similar work other projects are doing (SPDX) to make review less laborious. > To make it clear: This proposal does not reduce the quality of > debian/copyright in any way. Having an accurate debian/copyright file is > independent from quoting standard license texts. IMHO using links and > references is just common sense and reduces unnecessary make work. Right. Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/
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