Bug#47438: Copyright Information (Debian Policy Manual)
Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com> writes:
> Hmm. As I said I'm not a lawyer, and you raise some valid points :-)
>
> Could we perhaps at least update the copyright years? I'm not sure if
> that really makes sense, though, because I don't think Ian Jackson has
> been actively working on the Policy for awhile.
>
> I suppose copyright of the Policy Manual isn't a huge issue. It just
> seems strange to me that for an operating system that keeps its
> copyright so rigorously tracked, we are a bit lacking in a document as
> important as the Policy.
Well, from my perspective Debian rigorously tracks *licenses*.
Copyright notices are, I think, a distraction. They're not required in
any country that's a Berne signatory and they really have no practical
effect.
The GPL requires that we retain the copyright notice that was on the
manual when we started, or I'd just remove it entirely to avoid the
confusion.
What would people think of a patch like this, to at least remove the
confusion?
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -25,6 +25,13 @@
and Christian Schwarz.
</copyrightsummary>
<p>
+ These are the copyright dates of the original Poilcy manual.
+ Since then, this manual has been updated by many others. No
+ comprehensive collection of copyright notices for subsequent
+ work exists.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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