Bug#740118: lintian: extra-license-file severity overblown?

[Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.21
Severity: minor

I am not convinced that making this tag be a warning is appropriate.
The referenced section of policy[1] does not say anything about
not shipping other license files, and in some cases removing licenses
from binary packages could actually be license violations in themselves
(at least I can foresee a license text which requires it being put in a
certain location). Even if that's not the case, is it really worth
the effort to remove files which upstream has asked to be installed with
the package?

I can see how the tag would be useful as a heads up that there are license
files to review, but this would make it 'info' level, surely? Overriding
on this basis also seems wrong.

Thanks,
Dominic.

[1] <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s-copyrightfile>