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Re: Public domain and DEP-5-compliant debian/copyright



Le Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 11:18:11AM +0200, Florent Rougon a écrit :
> 
> 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'.

Dear Florent,

for the first point, please do not modify the upstream copyright statements
unless you have the permission from the authors: it is more likely to create
new confusions than to clarify the situation.

For the entry in the machine-readable copyright file, since the information
available suggests that the authors claim a copyright, I would just consider
that “This program is in the public domain.” is the license of the file:

Files: examples/*
Copyright: (C) 2002-2010, 2013, 2014 author A
           (C) 2000 author B
License: says-public-domain
 This program is in the public domain.

Not elegant, but accurate.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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