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Re: debian/copyright in source package



On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:44:10AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 10:41:16AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > > I think this has come up before, and my recollection of where we ended up
> > > in the past is that there probably isn't any *legal* reason to require
> > > debian/copyright in source packages.  However, there's a substantial
> > > *practical* reason, namely that the existing ftpmaster tooling depends on
> > > the existence of a source debian/copyright file for the way that they do
> > > license reviews, and that some tooling and process changes would be
> > > required before we can relax this requirement.

> Le Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 10:37:20PM +0200, Santiago Vila a écrit :
> > Yes, I think this practical reason (the ability to extract
> > automatically copyright files from source packages) is the main reason
> > why debian/copyright is required.

> > So we could just add it to policy as a rationale.

> Dear Santiago and everybody,

> how about the following ?  (in section 4.5)

> --- a/policy.sgml
> +++ b/policy.sgml
> @@ -1822,12 +1822,16 @@ zope.
>       <sect id="dpkgcopyright">
>         <heading>Copyright: <file>debian/copyright</file></heading>
>         <p>
>           Every {+source+} package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy
>           of its copyright information and distribution license in the
>           file [-<file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/copyright</file>-]{+<file>debian/copyright</file><footnote>+}
> {+          The <file>debian/copyright</file> file must be present, to+}
> {+          ease the review of new packages and to facilitate automatic+}
> {+          extraction of this information.  It may be generated from+}
> {+          templates, but not at build time.</footnote>+}
>           (see <ref id="copyrightfile"> for further details). Also see
>           <ref id="pkgcopyright"> for further considerations related to
>           copyrights for packages.
>         </p>
>       </sect>
>       <sect>
> 
> Even after that change, the sentence "Every package must be accompanied by
> a verbatim copy of its copyright information and distribution license in
> the file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright" still appears twice in the
> Policy.

I disagree with clarifying Debian Policy in this direction.  The practical
problem with the ftp team's tooling is a problem of their own making, and
not one that should cause more work for all Debian Developers to spend extra
time complying with a requirement which was never the intent of policy.

I will write more on this subject soon.

-- 
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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