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Re: do I need to mention tiny change in copyright file



Hi Joël,

On Fri, Mar 01, 2019 at 01:38:56PM +0100, Joël Krähemann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Do I need to mention the person submitted 3 patches in
> debian/copyright file, containing a total of 5 lines changed in my
> package?
> 
> I have attached the patches. Upstream did a notice in ChangeLog and
> AUTHORS as tiny change, as recommended by:
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant
> 
> bests,
> Joël

There seems to be a convention to credit the patch submitter in
d/changelog with "thanks to Name Family_Name" when the patch is not
legally significant.  When a patch is legally significant it must be
documented in d/copyright.

Of course if the patch submitter also submitted a changelog entry, or
if the patch imports in such a way that it generates one crediting the
author, I'll retain that.

Oh, and this is in addition to proper DEP-3 headers where the
submitter is credited and the source is provided.  When a patch is
cherry picked from upstream, it falls under upstream's copyright, and
I tend to believe that a DEP-3 header demonstrating upstream is the
origin is sufficient, and that upstream's "Files: *" stanza doensn't
needed to be extended to say "Files: *
debian/patches/cherry-picked-commit.patch".  Once again, if it's not
legally significant it shouldn't be added to d/copyright, but DEP-3
headers should still be used.


I'm sure more experienced members of this list can add something to
the intersection of best practises and potential mountain of paperwork
;-)

Cheers,
Nicholas

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