Bug#659574: lintian: legally wrong statement: copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright
Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> I'm fairly sure (having read the relevant law several times, as well as
> legal analyses of it) that Lintian's statement is correct in US law,
> although possibly poorly phrased.
I have applied the following patch, which should hopefully make this
clearer.
commit 241c5664605045cc387d04cf60356a92a3ddf51c
Author: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
Date: Sun Feb 12 12:47:56 2012 -0800
Clarify the legal status of copyright notices in long tag desc
* checks/copyright.desc:
+ [RA] Rephrase copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright long
description to be clearer about the legal status of copyright
notices. (Closes: #659574)
diff --git a/checks/copyright-file.desc b/checks/copyright-file.desc
index 3af3823..921ad04 100644
--- a/checks/copyright-file.desc
+++ b/checks/copyright-file.desc
@@ -264,9 +264,15 @@ Severity: wishlist
Certainty: certain
Info: The copyright file contains the incomplete Debian packaging
copyright boilerplate from older versions of <tt>dh_make</tt>.
- <tt>(C)</tt> is not considered as a valid way to express the copyright
- ownership. The word <tt>Copyright</tt> or the © symbol should be used
- instead or in addition to <tt>(C)</tt>.
+ <tt>(C)</tt> alone is not considered a valid copyright notice in at least
+ some countries. The word <tt>Copyright</tt> or the © symbol should be
+ used instead or in addition to <tt>(C)</tt>.
+ .
+ Copyright notices like this are, in any country that's a signatory to the
+ Berne Convention, not required to claim copyright on a work, but their
+ presence may allow claiming additional damages should a copyright case go
+ to court. If you provide a notice, you may as well provide one that's
+ legally valid.
Tag: copyright-refers-to-bad-php-license
Severity: serious
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index e9ed224..1cfac2e 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -44,6 +44,10 @@ lintian (2.5.5) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
+ [NT] Accepted patch from Gergely Nagy to catch dh-make vcs
templates in comments. Thanks to Paul Wise for suggesting this
check. (Closes: #657110)
+ * checks/copyright.desc:
+ + [RA] Rephrase copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright long
+ description to be clearer about the legal status of copyright
+ notices. (Closes: #659574)
* checks/cruft{,.desc}:
+ [NT] Added dh-autoreconf as a build-depends alternative to
libtool for suppressing ancient-libtool warning. Thanks to
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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