Bug#47438: Copyright Information (Debian Policy Manual)

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

Russ:

Thanks, I was unaware that there were bugs outstanding.

For such an important document I think some sort of recent copyright
is needed, though from reading the discussion on BTS#47438, I wouldn't
know what to put either. Everyone discussing on that list makes
compelling arguments, though I do think assigning copyright to SPI
Inc. makes the most sense. But I'm not a lawyer and have had no legal
training.

Even if it's not enforceable, I think something with a more recent
date is better than nothing. So I'm happy with adding a copyright line
for "Debian Policy List Contributors" or something.

Maybe it should be part of the Teams/Policy "constitution" that anyone
contributing to the Debian Policy Manual signs off copyright to the
SPI Inc.

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Russ Allbery<rra@debian.org> wrote:
> Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Does the Debian Policy Manual's copyright information need to be
>> updated?
>>
>> Currently it says:
>>    Copyright Notice
>>
>>    Copyright © 1996,1997,1998 Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz.
>>
>>    But clearly the new contributors should have a copyright line as
>> well, indicating their contributions in the meantime?
>
> The problem there is basically that we don't know who to list.  I
> suppose we could go back to the beginning of Manoj's arch history and
> then troll the changelog for more people to list, but that has a lot of
> limitations.  Also, we'd be listing dozens of people if we were
> comprehensive, although I suppose we could move that to an appendix.
That's a valid point. We have lots of packages in the Debian Perl
repository that we don't know who to assign copyright to, and it only
gets more difficult over time and as more contributors come and go.

I'd like to see this sorted out sooner rather than later, otherwise
it'll become even more difficult, and the repositories and changelogs
will be missing even more contributors. Maybe even a back appendix
somewhere saying "The following individuals have submitted one or more
paragraphs which have been accepted to the Debian Policy Manual",
though even that might be excessive (as long as we can be relatively
sure that the mailing list archives will be around indefinitely).
>
> See http://bugs.debian.org/47438 for lots of discussion of this.

Cheers,

Jonathan