On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 11:35:31PM +0100, Miriam Ruiz wrote: > 2007/12/2, Patrick Schoenfeld <schoenfeld@in-medias-res.com>: > > > 1) Copyright / license issues: By removing important information from > > the previous packaging you might insult the packaging license. > > Redistribution in Debian might therefore be illegal. > > While I do believe that, as a general rule, it's much better to keep > old changelog entries, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal at all > toremove them (IANAL) as long as you keep the copyright statements. It > might not be polite, but it definitely doesn't look illegal. The illegal part is distribution of the code without a license. If you violate the GPL, it is invalid (so you can't distribute the code using it). So if removing the ChangeLog entries is a violation of the GPL, it is indeed illegal to distribute that code. Why would it be in violation of the license? Because of 5a (of GPL3, GPL2 has a similar statement), which says: The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date. It doesn't actually say that you must keep intact these notices made by others before you. So as long as there is a ChangeLog entry for the latest modifications, I think the rest can be removed legally speaking (but IANAL). Of course with other licenses there may be other terms. I'm not sure if we consider a license DFSG-free if it would require keeping all ChangeLog entries intact. It reminds me of the "invariant sections" discussion for the GFDL. :-) Ah well, as long as no such license is seen, there's no need to make up our minds. :-) Thanks, Bas -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://pcbcn10.phys.rug.nl/e-mail.html
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