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Bug#835052: marked as done (base-files: Add to licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses)

Your message dated Sat, 31 Dec 2016 15:35:09 -0800
with message-id <87shp3ad02.fsf@hope.eyrie.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#835052: base-files: Add to licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses
has caused the Debian Bug report #835052,
regarding base-files: Add to licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
835052: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=835052
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: base-files
Version: 9.6
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

The machine-readable debian/copyright file format has a list [1] of licenses
with a "short name" so that code under those licenses is easy to identify.
It also insists that the full license text be included in debian/copyright
anyway unless the text is in /usr/share/common-licenses.

However, most of the licenses on the list aren't in /usr/share/common-licenses,
so debian/copyright becomes huge, and you have to format the license
text specially to match the format of debian/copyright. Please could the
list of licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses be extended to match all
the short license names (if possible)?

Thanks, 

George Bateman.

[1][https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#license-specification]

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.6.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages base-files depends on:
ii  gawk [awk]  1:4.1.3+dfsg-0.1
ii  mawk [awk]  1.3.3-17

base-files recommends no packages.

base-files suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Control: tags 835052 wontfix

George Bateman <george.bateman16@gmail.com> writes:

> The machine-readable debian/copyright file format has a list [1] of
> licenses with a "short name" so that code under those licenses is easy
> to identify.  It also insists that the full license text be included in
> debian/copyright anyway unless the text is in
> /usr/share/common-licenses.

> However, most of the licenses on the list aren't in
> /usr/share/common-licenses, so debian/copyright becomes huge, and you
> have to format the license text specially to match the format of
> debian/copyright. Please could the list of licenses in
> /usr/share/common-licenses be extended to match all the short license
> names (if possible)?

I'm afraid not.  This isn't the purpose of common-licenses.  The "common"
part there is important, and many of those licenses are quite rare in
practices.

The files in base-files are installed on every single Debian system, so we
try to keep the contents of it relatively minimal.  While we're currently
(slowly) debating where to set the thresholds for when to include a
license in common-licenses, and they possibly should be somewhat lowered,
I'm sure that we'll never put the bar low enough to include every license
mentioned in the copyright-format specification.

It's okay for debian/copyright to become huge if upstream uses huge,
complicated licenses.  That's what it's there for.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

--- End Message ---
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