Public domain and DEP-5-compliant debian/copyright

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Hello,

I have a few questions regarding public domain and DEP-5-compliant
debian/copyright files:

1. I have files in a program with the following "copyright" statement:

     # Copyright (C) 2002-2010, 2013, 2014  ...
     # Copyright (C) 2000  ...
     #
     # This program is in the public domain.

   but, as I understand it, public domain is the absence of copyright...
   right? Would it be better to replace this with:

     # Contributors: 2002-2010, 2013, 2014  ...
     #               2000  ...
     #
     # This program is in the public domain.

   ?

2. With the following stanza in debian/copyright (DEP-5):

     Files: examples/*
     License: public-domain

   I get two lintian warnings, the first of which being
   missing-field-in-dep5-copyright for the Copyright field IIRC, and the
   second one being 'missing-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright
   public-domain'. I can silence the first warning by adding:

     Copyright: These files have been put in the public domain.

   to the stanza (is this correct?). However, I am reluctant to write
   more things in the License field (or to add a stand-alone license
   paragraph) only to make lintian happy, since the code is just in the
   public domain with no restrictions whatsoever. Quoting
   <https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/>:

     When the License field in a paragraph has the short name
     public-domain, the remaining lines of the field /must/ explain
     exactly what exemption the corresponding files for that paragraph
     have from default copyright restrictions.

   but there are no particular exemptions applying here AFAICT... What
   do you suggest?

Thanks in advance for your answers, please Cc me as I am not subscribed.

-- 
Florent