Bug#513946: lintian: should not tag copyright-refers-to-versionless-license-file when using 'GPL-2+'

[Raphael Geissert <atomo64+debian@gmail.com>]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Evgeni Golov writes:
> 
>> currently lintian will tag a source with
>> copyright-refers-to-versionless-license-file when one refers to a
>> license symlink and lintian can't find \b(any|or)\s+later(\s+version)?\b
>> in the copyright file.
>>
>> That is imho wrong, esp with the new copyright format:
>> Files: foo
>> Copyright: bar
>> License: GPL-2+
>> That says foo is licensed under gpl v2 or later.
>>
>> The attached patch against git solves the issue for me.
> 
> I suspect there's still arguably a bug in such a package, since this would
> imply that the upstream license statement wasn't cut and pasted into the
> debian/copyright file, as is recommended best practice even with the new
> copyright format.  If it were, that phrase would still be there.

Exactly. "License: GPL-2+" isn't a replacement of license statement as it has no
meaning. IANAL but I would say it doesn't mean anything, just like "(C)" is not
considered to mean "Copyright".

> 
> However, if so, that's really a separate issue and this tag isn't the
> right one to apply.  So this patch looks good to me.  I'll go ahead and
> apply it.
> 

Yes, and a new check should be implemented.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphael Geissert - Debian Maintainer
www.debian.org - get.debian.net