Re: Bug#503395: RFS: mod-spamhaus

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Giuseppe Iuculano <giuseppe@iuculano.it> writes:

> Paul Wise ha scritto:
> > 
> > The upstream source does not contain any copyright information, you
> > might want to ask them to fix that.
> 
> There is a LICENSE file, isn't it enough?

Having the text of a license *accompany* the work isn't any indication
that you've been *granted* a license to that work.

What is needed is a clear statement of:

* What specific legal entity holds copyright in each identifiable part
  (usually, each separate file) of the work, and in what years that
  copyright began.

  Without this, it's not clear at all which parties might hold
  copyright, or when it will nominally expire.

* What license the copyright holder (in each case) explicitly grants
  in the work to the recipient.

  Without this, the recipient by default has *none* [0] of the rights held
  by the copyright holder.

These statements (copyright declaration, explicit grant of license)
need to be explicit and need to make clear what parts of the work are
covered.

The recommended way for this to happen is for these statements to be
inside a header at the top of every human-readable file; or, if some
of the file formats don't allow that, to also have a separate document
detailing these statements for all the parts of the work and the work
as a whole.


[0] (with very limited, jurisdiction-specific exceptions that don't
    help for the purpose of Debian packaging)

-- 
 \        “I washed a sock. Then I put it in the dryer. When I took it |
  `\                                 out, it was gone.” —Steven Wright |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney