Re: Why do we list individual copyright holders?
On Tue, 19 Dec 2017 20:47:01 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> writes:
>
>> On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 20:01:12 -0500, Jeremy Bicha <jbicha@ubuntu.com>
>> wrote:
>> >I was forced to spend a few hours doing a thorough copyright file
>> >earlier this year for mozjs52 which is simply the JavaScript engine
>> >from Firefox 52 ESR. I first tried copying the Firefox 52 ESR's
>> >copyright file (removing the extra lines that didn't apply to this
>> >more minimal source) but it wasn't complete enough. (mozjs52 is
>> >essential for GNOME Shell 3.26.)
>>
>> In the long run, this is going to keep big software packages from being
>> packaged for Debian.
>
> We (the Debian Project) don't have to accept being the *only* ones
> shouldering this burden. Large upstream organisations have large
> shoulders.
We (the Debian Project) can't tell anyone what to spend their time on. We
can't even tell our own volunteers. The only people we damage with
unreasonable requirements are ourselves and our users.
>
> Surely a team responsible for a large code base also must – to avoid
> self-delusion – confront the need to know, with confidence that comes
> from standard, verifiable documentation, the provenance of works from
> which their code base is derived.
Surely not. Whoever contributes to a project does so under the same
license terms as the project unless otherwise noted. Gathering a complete
list of copyright holders is ridiculous busywork, since the result is (1)
incomplete (do you crawl the entire VCS history or are you just scanning
the tarball?) and (2) untrustworthy.
I fully agree with Steve Langasek:
> 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.
Sometimes the license requires listing the copyright holders. In those
cases, the list of holders must be present in the copyright file. In the
rest, there is no need to list them. Only the license matters.
.oO( should the copyright file be renamed to license to avoid this
eternal discussion? )
--
Saludos,
Felipe Sateler
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