Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2009, Ben Finney wrote:
I think it's important for users of *all* software to have easy,
predictably-located access to the terms under which they receive
it.
What's the use case? That's what I'd like to focus on first; what
debian/copyright needs to enable people to do, not how it enables
people to do it.
Use case: Alice knows that different works have different licenses.
She loves free software, and applauds the DFSG for setting a threshold
for the minimum freedom for works to enter Debian. On that basis, she
is happy to install the Debian ‘frobnicator’ package on her system.
She knows, though, that the DFSG does not define any license terms,
and what she is permitted to do is defined by the specific terms of
the particular work. The ‘frobnicator’ package is in a field of
interest to her, and she wants to know the copyright terms that apply
to the works that make up that package. She looks in the documented
location for that information, ‘/usr/share/doc/frobnicator/copyright’.
What actions does Alice want to perform additional to the freedoms
laid out in the DFSG? That *should not matter*. If she wants to do
something and the copyright information on the work has something to
say about it, that information should be easily discoverable so she
can know her rights.
Sure, we could punt it to Alice to download the source code and hunt
around herself, essentially repeating the effort done by the package
maintainer. But since the package maintainer has already gone to that
effort, I think it's incumbent upon them to present that information
to Alice in a single, predictable location for that work, to make it
easier for her to know her rights in the work.