Bug#286842: lintian: Please enforce the ./debian/copyright "Copyright of" line
Package: lintian
Version: 1.23.3
Severity: wishlist
Presently, lots of people seem to misuse the "Copyright:" line given
in ./debian/copyright by dh_make. There are lots of lines matching
"^Copyright:$".
I believe this is not as intended, and, although Mostly Harmless,
introduces inconsistency. I propose that lintian errors on:
m/^Copyright(:?)$/m
The idea is to encourage these:
Copyright (C) 2004 by Justin Pryzby
Another solution would be to have a "boilerplate" "Copyright:
copyright-holder's-name-here" line, which is what I'm recommending in
a separate bug on dh-make. Then, lintian can error on that.
Right now on my laptop, with 1000+ installed packages, there are 4
that match "^Copyright$", all of which are not necessarily wrong, but
that Copyright line also doesn't add information. Its just:
Copyright
=========
Mind you, that's the name of the file ..
There are another 500 packages that match "^Copyright:$". Some may be
legitimate, but I suspect that most are not. Indeed, the first 3 of 4
that I just checked needlessly matched "^Copyright:$".
Justin
--snip
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