On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 03:45:03PM -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > 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. I disagree strongly. The cost of giving maintainers *different* ways to represent the license status is much higher than the cost of requiring maintainers to separately reproduce license headers for components that are GPL-2 licensed vs. GPL-2+. I also disagree with the refactoring originally requested by this bug report. Having stand-alone license paragraphs whose first line *doesn't match* the license field of the Files: paragraph it corresponds to means that parsers must embed all kinds of esoteric knowledge about which license names imply other licenses, and that kind of logic does not belong in a parser. The intent of DEP5 is not to ensure that a consistent block of text is used for the stand-alone license paragraph across all packages; it's to ensure that consistent names are used for describing the licenses so that they can be mechanically understood *regardless* of the text included there. > 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> > I am opposed to this change ever being included in the copyright-format standard. And in the meantime, I definitely don't consider it appropriate for inclusion in version 1.0, which is in standardization-bugfix-only mode. I'll leave the bug report open, for the policy maintainers to decide what to do with after copyright-format has gone 1.0. On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 02:22:57PM +0000, Ximin Luo wrote: > - License: paragraphs are not defined in a good way > - because of this bad/unclear definition, DEP5 uses "license notices" as > examples for License: stanzas, which I argued is wrong. The use of license notices in License: stanzas is deliberate and will not be changed for 1.0. However, if you think the language is unclear, I'm certainly open to seeing it improved: we don't want the requirements of DEP5 to be ambiguous. > > I would like to re-frame the discussion and remind that, at the base of > > the DEP, there are the requirements of the Debian policy, of the Debian > > archive administrators, and the common practice. > > In the case of the (L)GPL, it is common practice to use the license > > notices as found in headers of files as if they were the actual license > > text. First because the Policy §12.5 specifies that the copyright file > > should point at > > /usr/share/common-licenses instead of quoting these licenses, and second > > because the Archive administrators require us to include these headers > > (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html) > I am arguing that the "common practise" is incorrect. > The first reason does not hold: pointing to a license file is different to > including a "license notice" because a "license notice" is NOT a > *license*, it often contains extra information (like authors and which > software). > The second reason also does not hold: That email you quoted is about the > copyright file as a whole, whereas I am only arguing against the License: > stanza. Of course the file as a whole must contain information equivalent > to a "license notice". But the License: stanza must not, as I argued > before. You are asking to redefine the meaning of the field which has been consistently accepted when discussing this proposed standard for more than a year. That's not going to happen. > To be consistent, you must pick one of these two: > - License: paragraphs can't be split - they specify the entire terms for a > given set of files. "MPL or LGPL or GPL" is separate license from "LGPL > or GPL" and they each need separate License: paragraphs > - License: paragraphs can be split into common components, and > "relicensing" comments be pushed back into the File: paragraph, and > disallowed to be in the License: paragraph. This forbids many many > "license notices" which often contain such information. The first option is not acceptable because it requires reproduction of long licenses such as the MPL multiple times in a single file. The second option is not acceptable first, because it's a substantial change to the semantics of the DEP5 format, and that's not happening for 1.0; second, because of the issue mentioned above about embedding logic in parsers that shouldn't be there; and third, because the license terms of the work in question *are* that you may distribute it "under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version", and it is wholly false to say that this information does not belong in a "license" field. You may find the current behavior inconsistent, but it's the right thing to do. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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