Re: Goals of debian/copyright

["Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@debian.org>]

Don Armstrong wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009, Mike Hommey wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 02:56:57PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > > I think we're getting bogged down in the debian/copyright discussion,
> > > and I'm starting to think that some enumeration of what we need
> > > debian/copyright for would help us figure out what it should actually
> > > contain.
> > >
> > > I've listed the things that I remember from the relevant threads (and
> > > my personal recollection):
> > >
> > > 1) DFSG Free licensing of all parts distributed by Debian in main
> > >
> > > 2) License compatibility (both intra-work and inter-work)
> > >
> > > 3) Satisfy licence requirements in binary .debs
> > More than that, licensing information should be about the binary
> > files, not the source files.
>
> I could never figure out how to separate the license of the binary
> files from the licenses of the source files used to generate the
> binaries in all but trivial cases, so I've avoided drawing
> distinctions between the two. I'm also not sure if there's some case
> where the distinction actually matters. [If there is, pointing it out
> would be useful.]

But it is important to do to check license compabilities.
We all know that OpenSSL license and GPL are not compatible, but
the two licenses are still free.
But now the things are more complex: what about a KDE application
with uses also some glade plugins, and which use other libraries.
How to check if there are some incompatibilities?

If debian/copyright includes also the binary license, I should not
check the 100 or more package which depends (and links) on glade or
KDE or...).

ciao
	cate