Re: ``Disclaimer'' field to document non-free-ness reasons [ Was: non-free? ]

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:48:48PM +0900, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit :
> 
> Questions for my -policy friends: can I conclude from the above that the
> Disclaimer field is to be used _only_ for contrib/non-free packages, and
> only to explain the reason of their (transitive) non-free-ness? Or is
> there a risk of overloading it for other reasons? (The current text
> implies it is not, but the name is a bit generic, and I prefer safe over
> sorry.)

Hi Stefano,

this use was my intent in 2008 when I added this field, following the release
of version 3.8.0.0 of our Policy, that closed bug #65577 asking that “copyright
should include notice if a package is not a part of Debian distribution”.  

https://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat?action=diff&rev1=183&rev2=184

I do not remember if I wanted the Disclaimer field to be exclusively used for
statements that packages are not part of the Debian distribution.  In any case,
a quick inspection of the Debian copyright files in the “packages-metadata”
repository show that the field is also being used for other purposes.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan