On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:00:23 -0400, Jonathan Yu wrote: (A few comments, I've read the whole thread and agree with a lot others have said.) > +=head1 Copyright and License Information I agree that duplicating this information doesn't help a lot. Maybe a short pointer ("genereal policy is covered <here>, this just specifies how we handle some details") would be ok. > +This information, collected for each and every file in a package, is provided > +to our users through a machine-parseable file called b<debian/copyright>, as > +defined in L<DEP5|http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/>. Documenting as a group policy that we use DEP5-style while it's optional in Debian in general would be ok for me. > +=head2 Team-Maintained Software > +Often, large software projects are maintained by numerous members of a team. > +Historically, Perl software has been developed quite informally, without > +anything resembling the L<Contributor License Agreement| > +http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement>s (CLA) seen > +frequently in large corporate-sponsored open source projects. [I think the "L<$text|$url>"-style links are not valid POD (anymore?).] In generall I share the often-mentioned dislike of copyright assignment; besides, it doesn't add anything when we add it to our policy (i.e. to our description how we handle things). > +=head3 Synchronizing copyright information > +In many cases, members should manually synchronize copyright information > +for major projects. It is recommended that this information be maintained > +as part of L<copyright.pod> in order to provide a single source of common > +contributor contact information. I have to admit that I don't understand if this refers to upstream or to our work. If it's the former it might be a helpful hint for upstream (IIRC such a request triggered this debate) but shouldn't go into our policy; if the latter I still don't understand it :) Ah, I think I get it: You mean using our policy.pod a.k.a. http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/copyright.html as a copypaste source for lists of copyright holders that apply to multiple package? Yes, something like that might be helpful. > +=head3 Dependent packages > +Where a team maintains some packages that depend on a single "parent" > +package (for example, a project with a main package as well as plugins), > +it is possible to refer to information in the "parent" package. That would be helpful, I'm not sure if it's allowed by Debian Policy, and it should probably be checked with ftp-masters. In general, I think providing a rationale/history of this proposal would help to focus the discussion :) Cheers, gregor -- .''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ -- GPG key IDs: 0x8649AA06, 0x00F3CFE4 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux user, admin, & developer - http://www.debian.org/ `. `' Member of VIBE!AT & SPI, fellow of Free Software Foundation Europe `- NP: Die Schmetterlinge: Dachau-Lied
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature