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Re: Use of License-Reference in debian/copyright allowed?



Quoting John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (2022-01-16 19:38:25)
> (Please CC me, I'm not subscribed to debian-devel)
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I'm currently updating the debian/copyright of my two packages 
> fs-uae-arcade [1] and fs-uae-launcher [2] as both packages got 
> rejected by the FTP team due to an incomplete debian/copyright.
> 
> Since the packages contain a lot of different licenses, the 
> debian/copyright would be very long when copying the different license 
> texts verbatim.
> 
> However, I stumbled over the fonts-roboto package which resolves this 
> issue by using just references to the full license texts which are 
> present on any Debian system anyway [3].
> 
> I have updated debian/copyright of both fs-uae-* packages to use the 
> "License-Reference" keyword, however lintian now complains about the 
> missing license texts so I'm wondering whether this approach - which I 
> like - is actually compliant with the Debian Policy?

License texts are required to be included verbatim.

A few license texts are _already_ included verbatim in the base systems.

What fonts-roboto does is to reference licenses already included.

I firmly believe that it is Policy-compliant to reference files included 
with package base-files and installed below /usr/share/common-licenses.  
All other license texts must be included verbatim in the 
debian/copyright file

Please note, however, that license _grants_ (i.e. the various ways a 
copyright holder can state that they grant some _referenced-by-them_ 
license) need not be included verbatim.

The lintian complaint is discussed in bug#786450.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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