Re: Why do we list individual copyright holders?

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org>]

On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 08:51:37AM -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>...
> I intend to work within the FTP Team to get some clarification on the team's 
> position on this, but I don't expect it to be quick.  I agree we could do with 
> better documentation of what the policy is and why.
>...

Thanks for doing this.

One result of a clear policy with rationale should be that it gets 
applied without any too-big-too-fail exceptions to all packages that 
pass through NEW.

This would remove the perception that e.g. src:linux seems to be able to 
pass NEW all the time with a debian/copyright that would result in a 
reject for every other package - either a requirement is enforced for 
all packages, or it clearly isn't required.

src:linux, where complete authorship information is often not easily 
available [1] and copyright ownership information is in many cases not 
available at all [2], would actually be a good litmus test for what 
requirements are workable in practice. With the Linux Foundation behind 
the kernel and lawsuits around kernel copyright already taken place, 
there should also be plenty of lawyer opinion available and implemented 
regarding what copyright information is actually required in the real 
world for (corporate) users worldwide.

A new debian/copyright for src:linux could also be a good example
to be published together with the documentation of this policy to
make it clear what copyright information the ftp team requires
from non-trivial packages.

> Scott K
>...

cu
Adrian

BTW: My pet rant about debian/copyright is that too much emphasis
     is placed on the copyright years that are usually irrelevant,
     since copyright expires no earlier than 50 years [3] after
     the death of the author.[4][5]

BTW2: IANAL


[1] especially from the pre-git times
[2] for none of the 2k commits that have me as author is the
    information available whether the copyright is owned by me,
    employer or 3rd party customer
[3] in some places longer, e.g. the EU has 70 years after death
[4] an author could be in one of the few countries that are not a party 
    to the Berne Convention, but at that point we already hit the 
    complete lack of information about the applicable copyright law
[5] the Berne Convention convention is from 1886 (sic) but the
    US only joined in 1989; many formalities around copyright
    people in the US have heard of are from the pre-1989 rules
    how copyright had to be registered in the US - now copyright
    is automatic in the US just like everywhere else

-- 

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       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
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