Bug#65764: my thoughts

[bdale@gag.com (Bdale Garbee)]

I've thought about this a bit, since Josip pointed the issue out to me on IRC.
Here is my take on it, as a long-timer...

I was never aware that policy required putting a summary of changes in the
copyright file, and I've never done it.  I note that a couple packages I now
maintain contain such content that I inherited from previous maintainers.

In the time when we didn't have as many well-known filenames in each package,
the current policy may have made sense.  I don't really think it does today.
What I currently use is:

	copyright	- upstream author, location, copyright, license

	README.Debian	- anything non-obvious about this package on Debian,
			  which would include any overall configuration
			  decisions, FAQ's, etc.  A good example is in the
			  bind package, where I explain the directory schema
			  I've chosen.  If anything substantive other than
			  "normal packaging" happened, this is where I'd expect
			  to read about it, not in the copyright file.

	changelog	- details of the ongoing struggle to maintain the
			  package

I think the copyright file is something we should strive to not have to 
update routinely.  I like the notion that it is created when something is
packaged for the first time, and only updated when something significant
about the upstream changes (URL, maintainer, license).  For example, I try
to indicate the directory an upstream came from, not the fully qualified
filename, so that I don't have to update it every time I grab a new version.

So, I guess I'd like to see policy updated to indicate that README.Debian is
where any non-trivial and/or non-obvious modifications to the package should
be documented, and I'd like to see copyright kept as clean and simple as
possible.  In fact, I'd love to see the copyright file structure regularized
so that they can be automatically parsed, but that's another issue...

Bdale