Bug#462996: Bug#649674: [copyright-format] Proofreading of the examples.
Charles Plessy wrote:
> Le Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 08:58:30PM -0600, Jonathan Nieder a écrit :
>> Unless the license itself has some relevant requirement on
>> distribution of binaries, nothing mentioned above (except maybe the
>> “verbatim”) requires the license headers from source files to be
>> reproduced. It is the copyright information and the (verbatim)
>> license that actually matter.
[...]
> To my knowledge, for the reproduction of copyright notices, the latest
> authoritative statement was made five years ago and was not relaxed.
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html
Thanks, that helps[*].
> - Its not enough to have the following two-liner:
> | On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License
> | can be found in the `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL' file.
>
> There are license headers, like the one used for GPL in the example below, you
> should use those.
This doesn't say that the license headers from the source should be
exactly reproduced. It seems more likely that Joerg wanted to remind
people to include a disclaimer of warranty.
> Integreations of the requirements of the above email in the Policy are
> requested in ‘http://bugs.debian.org/462996’;.
Cc-ed.
Regards,
Jonathan
[*] Quick reactions:
It's not obvious to me that one should take this email from five years
ago as authoritative. Couldn't something have changed since then? It
also seems possible that in details it might not precisely reflect the
project's, the ftpmasters', or even the author's opinion.
So I tend to trust the policy and ftpmasters' day-to-day feedback
more. For example: the aforementioned email says that
debian/copyright should contain the authors' names, but much software
in Debian only lists the copyright holders' names (e.g., libc), and I
don't think that's a bug.
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