Bug#633994: debian-policy: confusion over what the license information in the copyright file actually means
Le Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 08:30:53PM +0100, Nicholas Bamber a écrit :
> The package maintainer wants the following stanza
>
>
> Copyright: (C) 1995-1998, 2000, 2003-2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> License: GFDL-1.1+
> Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
> under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
> any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
> Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover texts being ``A GNU Manual,''
> and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below.
> .
> On Debian systems, the full text of the GNU Free Documentation License
> version 1.2 can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/GFDL-1.2'.
>
> If it were me I would have them match.
Dear Nicholas,
this is very similar to the past situation for many perl modules, licensed
under same terms as Perl itself, that is Artistic or GPL-1+. For a long time,
Debian did not distribute a copy of the GPL version 1 in
/usr/share/common-licenses (http://bugs.debian.org/436105), and it was accepted
to refer to other versions of the GPL instead. Nevertheless, the GPL-1 was
eventually added to /usr/share/common-licenses, and some packages use this
facility.
My personal opinion is that the paragraph as written above is inconsistent: it
says that license is version A, and points at version B. In general, I tend to
put sentences that point at /usr/share/common-licenses/ in a separate ‘Comment’
header, since anyway it does not belong to the original text.
Lastly, if the original upstream sources do include a copy of the GFDL-1.1, my
personal opinion is that it would be a good practice to include it.
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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