retitle 431109 [PROPOSAL] Disambiguate of Section 12.5, Deprecate GPL/LGPL symlinks thanks On Fri, Jun 29, 2007 at 10:04:02PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: > > Following /usr/share/doc/base-files/FAQ, I'm reassigning this to debian-policy. > > Please read my email to debian-legal ad debian-policy from two days ago. In my interpretation, Policy doesn't exclude any version of the GPL from this requirement, but I admit that it is ambigous, specially considering the examples. This proposal does essentialy two things: - Disambiguate GPL/LGPL versioning requirement by extending it to any DFSG compatible version the FSF may publish. - Deprecate use of symlinks, since they're a source of problems (as exposed by GPLv3, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/06/msg00234.html) -- Robert Millan My spam trap is honeypot@aybabtu.com. Note: this address is only intended for spam harvesters. Writing to it will get you added to my black list.
diff -ur debian-policy-3.7.2.2.old/policy.sgml debian-policy-3.7.2.2/policy.sgml
--- debian-policy-3.7.2.2.old/policy.sgml 2006-10-03 00:36:50.000000000 +0200
+++ debian-policy-3.7.2.2/policy.sgml 2007-06-29 23:58:41.000000000 +0200
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
<p>
A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as
- <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL</file> in the Debian GNU/Linux
+ <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2</file> in the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution or on the World Wide Web at
<url id="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html";
name="the GNU General Public Licence">. You can also
@@ -8625,24 +8625,26 @@
<p>
Packages distributed under the UCB BSD license, the Artistic
- license, the GNU GPL, and the GNU LGPL, should refer to the
- corresponding files under
+ license, the GNU GPL or LGPL (any version as published by the Free
+ Software Foundation that Debian considers free as per DFSG), should
+ refer to the corresponding files under
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses</file>,<footnote>
<p>
For example,
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic</file>,
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/BSD</file>,
- <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL</file>,
- <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL</file>,
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL</file>,
- <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2</file>, and
- <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-2.1</file>, and so
+ <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3</file>, and
+ <file>/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-3</file>, and so
on. Note that the GFDL is new here, and the license file
may not yet be in place in
<file>/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL</file>.
</p>
</footnote> rather than quoting them in the copyright
- file.
+ file. Packages should not refer to GPL and LGPL symlinks in
+ that directory since different, incompatible versions of these
+ licenses have been published by the Free Software Foundation,
+ hence using the symlinks could lead to ambiguity.
</p>
<p>
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