Bug#491685: debian-copyright-line-too-long is inconvenient

[Noah Slater <nslater@bytesexual.org>]

Hey,

I would like to weigh in on this issue.

Reformatting third party licences to fit nicely into 80 characters per line is
troublesome and error-prone, not to mention the slippery slope of reformatting
in general - i.e. where does one stop, re-indenting bullet point lists or
re-aligning section titles?

Because of these problems I make a habit of including licence text strictly
verbatim in debian/copyright as the formatting and length of some licences can
be complex and large.

Take this debian/copyright as a specific example:

  http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/python-apps/packages/planet-venus/trunk/debian/copyright?op=file&sc=1

This generates the following warnings:

  W: planet-venus: debian-copyright-line-too-long line 74
  W: planet-venus: debian-copyright-line-too-long line 82
  W: planet-venus: debian-copyright-line-too-long line 108

I do not think lintian should be raising any notices about debian/copyright if
only because the majority of it's content is beyond our control.

Best,

-- 
Noah Slater, http://bytesexual.org/nslater