Re: Bug#633994: debian-policy: confusion over what the license information in the copyright file actually means
* Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> [110715 22:18]:
> For the former (license upgrades), the Debian maintainer should also
> patch the source files to make the change, right? If that's done,
> then I agree that it seems reasonable.
>
> For the latter (license explanation), I also agree it's reasonable.
> "A verbatim copy" has always been a somewhat problematic phrase
> because in practice it's not the words that matter but the meaning.
> When describing the license of binaries, of course it is more valuable
> to document the actual license the user has than the separate licenses
> of the components used to build it.
I think the "verbatim" is extremly important. Meaning is always a matter
of interpretation and no maintainer can claim to have a perfect
understanding. Misunderstanding and changing something out of a wrong
understanding is very similar to willfully misinterpreting the author's
wishes and permissions. Similar enough that in the end a judge has to
decide what it was.
You should never change what is in source files. If you think it is
important you can amend it. (Like: "Due to licenses in other files,
your only option here is <this and that option/license/whatever>"
or "The README also grants the following rights: ..." or so on).
Also the debian/copyright should always contain the verbatim grant of
the license. If that points to additional material, it might not be
necessary to include ineffective/unused parts this points to, but
at least the license grant itself should be there as verbatimly
as possible[1].
If anything is unclear, make it clear and give the additional
information, but do not make it look like it is what the author wrote,
unless it is what the author wrote.
> debian/copyright describes the license users get, while "egrep -R -e
> (opyright|icense|ublic)" in the source package gives the upstream
> granted license. So I think we're doing fine on that front. :)
We are no legal entity that can protect our users against any claims,
our users face the problems if there are any, so they should be able
to make an informed decision from looking at debian/copyright.
And not be mislead to think everything is fine just because we thought
it is and thought it would be a clever idea to hide any discrepancies
away.
Bernhard R. Link
[1] Exceptions are usually removal of indendation/comment characters/
line splitting, deduplication and things like that. Even for the
common (and for readability quite important) consolidation of copyright
statements with different years I'd not be suprised if there are same
lawyers out there advising against ist.
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