On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 05:28:12PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Simon McVittie writes ("Re: Has Copyright summarizing outlived its usefulness?"):
> > I've written about this before, for example in
> > <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/08/msg00181.html>, and I'd be
> > very glad to see an "official" response from the ftp team.
> 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.
The debian/copyright isn't valuable as input to the ftpmaster review, it's
treated as the /object/ of the review and the ftp team imposes an artificial
requirement, not grounded in either Debian Policy or the requirements of our
licenses, that debian/copyright align with their analysis of the copyright
of the source package in order to clear the NEW queue.
So the ftp NEW process is auditing the wrong things, for the wrong reasons.
The purpose of debian/copyright is not to duplicate the copyright and
license information already included in the upstream sources; it's to
provide the relevant information to users who only have the binary package.
> 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.
Yes; and the way to fix this is to correct this misconception (rooted in the
historical policy error to specify copyright as a source-level file) that
debian/copyright *should* document the source copyright instead of the
binary copyright.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature