Re: Missing licenses in upstream source files
Ben Finney wrote:
[note: quotations in random order]
(We're now in ‘debian-legal’ territory; please follow up there.)
Too often, though, such files are a set of license *terms* only (e.g.
the text of the GPL), with no copyright status or explicit *grant* of
license. That's not enough for Debian to know the rights of
recipients: mere inclusion of license terms is not a grant of license
under those terms.
I don't agree. Only in journals you will find copyright notice and author
on every pages. Don't mean that there are copyright problem
on my favorite book, in inner pages. I think it the same for sources.
You could write the license (or a reference) on every file, or you could
write only a general file (e.g. COPYING), if it is clear that the
license cover all the files. This is true particularly for small programs.
On large programs or when there are multiple licenses I recommend upstreams
to put a copyright notice and license for every important file (i.e.
sources and non-trivial header files).
IANAL, but other contributors are not listed in the "legal header",
but still copyright owner, so the same assumptions we do:
"not all contributor are listed, and same license as top header" we could
do the same assumptions for file without explicit legal notice (but
with a top level license and an AUTHOR-like file).
See below:
> What is needed is an explicit copyright notice and grant of license.
> An example:
>
> Copyright 2009 Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>
> You have permission to copy, modify, and redistribute under the
> terms of the WTFPL. For full license terms, see LICENSE.txt.
>
> That is, we need the copyright status (who holds it, when did it
> begin) and explicit grant of license (what the recipient is permitted
> to do with the work) to be unambiguous for every part of the work. Or
> in other words, you need enough explicit information, from the
> copyright holder, to write the ‘debian/copyright’ file.
>
> If the referenced file has *all* of that, and every part of the work
> is unambiguously covered by it, it's enough.
There are not such thing as "unambiguous" ;-)
I sent you few patches:
patch A: a patch to correct a typo
patch B: a patch to enhance the WTFP
(code-only patch, without touching the "legal header").
and I did a NMU:
patch C: a not yet defined patch
You (as most of upstream) incorporated patches A and B in your sources,
without further reference (but maybe on a CREDIT file or changelog).
Are you still the only copyright owner? I don't think so.
What license on my modification? the same license (or public domain?)
If you want to relicense the program to WTFAOPL, did you need my
permission?
A tangent question:
What about patch C: note in debian/copyright I wrote that
packing things are licensed with the WTFPL4
[Note that dh-make on GPL2 only program uses GPL3 for packaging license].
My interpretation is that patch C will have the original license
and only debian/* have the WTFPL4.
ciao
cate
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