Copyright format (DEP-5) License notice
(I know you both read debian-policy, but it always feels weird to address
direct questions to people without cc'ing them so they get direct mail, so
you get direct mail because of my weird sense of etiquette. Sorry if it's
just annoying.)
A specific question for Steve and Charles....
The current copyright format document contains the following statement:
<para>
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
</para>
The problem is that there's no copyright notice. So this license is sort
of problematic. :)
I think that the lack of a copyright statement is a feature, not a bug.
The only purpose that a copyright notice serves under Berne is to
establish additional statutory damages in some countries like the US (by
meeting the legal requirements for knowing infringement), but for this
(and given that license) we don't really care. And I have no desire to
examine all the history of DEP-5 development to try to come up with an
accurate and complete copyright notice. As we've found with Debian
Policy, they're not really maintainable for these sorts of documents where
wording suggestions come from innumerable different people.
I would therefore like to just apply the following patch:
--- a/copyright-format/copyright-format-1.0.xml
+++ b/copyright-format/copyright-format-1.0.xml
@@ -14,8 +14,8 @@
<legalnotice>
<para>
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
- are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
- notice and this notice are preserved.
+ are permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is
+ preserved.
</para>
</legalnotice>
<abstract>
The original DEP-5 wiki page didn't have a license. I studied the
revision history of DEP-5 in bzr, and it looks like this license was
introduced by Charles in a patch merged by Steve. So I figured I'd just
ask the two of you: do you see any problem with applying the above patch
and just dropping the requirement around a copyright notice?
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: