Bug#649530: [copyright-format] clearer definitions and more consistent License: stanza specification
Ximin Luo wrote:
> On 12/12/11 01:19, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>> Perhaps a source of confusion is something Joerg wrote five years
>> ago[1]:
[...]
>> I continue to believe that what he meant is that such pre-made license
>> headers are good at covering their bases and that it is advisable to
>> take advantage of the work that was already done in writing them.
[...]
> Sorry, I didn't understand your point here. Are you saying it's better to
> include license notice as the actual text? I don't think "does not actually say
> that [..] applies [..] at all" is a problem - the File: stanza already takes
> care of that.
>
> For me, License: stanza is just a declaration of terms.
Ah, thanks for your patience in clarifying. I misunderstood both you
and Charles before.
So, the main change in practice that you are proposing is that
when reformatting a copyright file describing a project under the
GPL, packagers should not be allowed to write
License: GPL-2
This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2.
.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
details.
.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
.
On Debian systems, the text of the GNU General Public License
version 2 can be found at /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2.
Instead, packagers would write something like this:
Comments:
This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2.
.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
details.
.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
License: GPL-2
On Debian systems, the text of the GNU General Public License
version 2 can be found at /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2.
I don't see any compelling reason to _mandate_ that style immediately,
since as Charles mentioned, it does not much current practice. But I
don't see anything wrong with permitting it.
That would mean removing the sentence
This field should include all text needed in order to fulfill both
Debian Policy's requirement for including a copy of the software's
distribution license (12.5), and any license requirements to include
warranty disclaimers or other notices with the binary package.
As you said, it does not match existing practice in the case of
BSD-style licenses anyway (for which a part of the required notices
tends to go in the Copyright field, not the License field).
Illustrative patch follows. Sorry to have been so dense.
diff --git i/copyright-format.xml w/copyright-format.xml
index 1f6c041b..069b022c 100644
--- i/copyright-format.xml
+++ w/copyright-format.xml
@@ -474,12 +474,6 @@ License: MPL-1.1
Otherwise, this field should either
include the full text of the license(s) or include a pointer to the
license file under <filename>/usr/share/common-licenses</filename>.
- This field should include all text needed in order to fulfill both
- Debian Policy's requirement for including a copy of the software's
- distribution license (<ulink
- url="http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs#s-copyrightfile";>12.5</ulink>),
- and any license requirements to include warranty disclaimers or
- other notices with the binary package.
</para>
</section>
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