Re: debian/copyright and Files-Within-Files

[Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Russ Allbery<rra@debian.org> wrote:
> Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I realize DEP5 and all of that stuff regarding a machine-readable
>> copyright isn't set yet.
>>
>> However, I've come across a case where tarballs contain files that
>> have various copyrights, and I'm not sure how to represent them in
>> d/copyright.
>>
>> For example, if an upstream module contains a Stuff.tar.gz, and that
>> file itself contains stuff that is all under the same license, but has
>> different copyright information.
>>
>> Assume Stuff.tar.gz contains files:
>>  foo.c
>>  bar.txt
>>  baz.c
>>
>> And foo.c is: Copyright 2005 Some Company A
>> bar.txt is Copyright 2002 Some Person B
>> baz.c is Copyright 2002-2007 Other Fictional Entity
>>
>> How would we represent such a case? Would we need to unpack that
>> tarball and then reference the files appropriately?
>
> Well, from a Policy perspective, the answer is "write clear English text
> explaining the situation and giving the license details."  Policy is
> mostly mum about whether you need to bother with the individual file
> copyrights (as opposed to the collection copyright of the package) if
> the license doesn't require you to, but it's probably easier right now
> if you have that available to add it in.
Indeed, I am aware that there is no official Policy decision on
copyright formats yet. Right now we're using
http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat?action=recall&rev=196
and waiting to see what comes out of DEP5. (I should have sent this to
debian-devel instead, but I couldn't remember if DEP5 was using this
list or debian-devel for their discussion)
>
> The question was previously raised on debian-devel I think about what to
> do with this case from a DEP5 perspective.  I personally have no idea.
> I don't think a DEP5 copyright file provides a very good structure for
> talking about this sort of distribution.

Unfortunately I think for now we're just going to do away with the
problem by re-packing the module without those files (some other
tarballs had to be removed because they didn't carry appropriate
license & copyright information).

I'm not sure if I was the person that previously brought up such a
discussion on debian-devel; there is a good chance I participated in
that discussion. I'll have to look through the archives.

Thanks Russ.

Cheers,

Jonathan