debian/copyright completeness/finickyness

[Alexander Toresson <alexander.toresson@gmail.com>]

Hello all!

For an application I'm currently helping with packaging, there are
many (source and non-source) files without license statements, of
which many don't even have a stated author. How do we handle these? Do
we need to investigate the license and/or author of each file, or is
it possible to assume that the files are under the main license of the
application, and are made by the main authors of the application? The
files in question number in the hundreds, making it not very practical
to go through them all...

Also, when using a machine-readable copyright file, do you need to
separate paragraghs for different authors?
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#copyright-field
suggests that you would not need to do that, but I've gotten different
information from the main maintainer  of the package.

Please CC me, I'm not on the list. Thanks in advance!
Alexander