Re: debian/copyright completeness/finickyness
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 1:26 AM, Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 11:43:29PM +0100, Alexander Toresson wrote:
>> 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?
>
> Unless you have a specific reason to believe this is not the case, yes, it's
> a reasonable assumption that the files have the same copyright and license
> as the main body of the work. There is no requirement of per-file copyright
> notices.
>
>> 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.
>
> Provided that the license is the same, such that it's possible to express
> this as a single paragraph without being inaccurate, you don't need separate
> paragraphs.
>
> (E.g., if the source package contains source for two different programs, and
> the sources are freely but incompatibly licensed, don't just say Files: *
> License: License-1 and License-2 since that doesn't tell users anything
> about what their rights are.)
>
Thank you!
// Alexander
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