FYI: Updates to copyright and author notices
When making changes to Policy, I've always used a bug to track any
normative changes (changes that effect Policy requirements). For
non-normative changes like typos, formatting, wording consistency, and so
forth, I'll often just commit them directly to the repository with a
changelog entry rather than making explicit note of them here.
There's a set of stuff that's sort of in-between, where I feel comfortable
just making the change as a Policy Editor without approval, but where it
seems worth having some more public record so that people can disagree if
I make a mistake. Following the convention on the glibc development list,
I'm going to start noting those here as I commit them with an FYI subject
prefix. We'll see if this system works.
The first of these: the copyright notices on our various documents are not
really accurate, and an accurate copyright notice would be absurdly large.
The compromise we reached a while back with the main Policy document was
to add a legal notice explaining that the copyright is for the original
document and lots of subsequent changes have been made. We didn't
replicate that notice across the other documents with copyright notices;
I've now done that, along with some tweaks to the copyright year markup
and standardizing the way we refer to the policy mailing list.
We also had two documents that indicated they were copyright Software in
the Public Interest. Per previous discussions, this isn't legally
correct; at the time, SPI didn't have a copyright assignment mechanism,
and it's unlikely that the original authors have gone back and done that
assignment. I've replaced this copyright notice with the same convention
we use for the main document: a copyright notice for the original authors.
Diff as applied:
diff --git a/debconf_spec/debconf_specification.xml b/debconf_spec/debconf_specification.xml
index 638688a..81490c7 100644
--- a/debconf_spec/debconf_specification.xml
+++ b/debconf_spec/debconf_specification.xml
@@ -29,6 +29,10 @@
<address><email>joeyh@debian.org</email></address>
</affiliation>
</author>
+ <author>
+ <othername>The Debian Policy Mailing List</othername>
+ <email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>
+ </author>
<copyright>
<year>1998</year>
<year>1999</year>
@@ -37,6 +41,12 @@
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
<para>
+ These are the copyright dates of the original configuration
+ management protocol document. Since then, this document has been
+ updated by many others. No comprehensive collection of copyright
+ notices for subsequent work exists.
+ </para>
+ <para>
This text is copyright by the authors under the terms of the
BSD license, sans advertising clause.
</para>
diff --git a/menu-policy.xml b/menu-policy.xml
index b3ce458..b79c32f 100644
--- a/menu-policy.xml
+++ b/menu-policy.xml
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
</personname>
</author>
<author>
- <othername>The Debian Policy mailing List</othername>
+ <othername>The Debian Policy Mailing List</othername>
<email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>
</author>
</authorgroup>
@@ -44,11 +44,17 @@
<copyright>
<year>1999</year>
- <holder>Software in the Public Interest, Inc.</holder>
+ <holder>Chris Waters, Joey Hess, and Joost Witteveen</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
<para>
+ These are the copyright dates of the original Debian Menu
+ sub-policy. Since then, this document has been updated by many
+ others. No comprehensive collection of copyright notices for
+ subsequent work exists.
+ </para>
+ <para>
This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
diff --git a/perl-policy.xml b/perl-policy.xml
index 98ec5c9..7453c62 100644
--- a/perl-policy.xml
+++ b/perl-policy.xml
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
</personname>
</author>
<author>
- <othername>The Debian Policy mailing list</othername>
+ <othername>The Debian Policy Mailing List</othername>
<email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>
</author>
</authorgroup>
@@ -38,11 +38,18 @@
</abstract>
<copyright>
- <year>1999, 2001</year>
- <holder>Software in the Public Interest</holder>
+ <year>1999</year>
+ <year>2001</year>
+ <holder>Raphaël Hertzog and Brendan O'Dea</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
<para>
+ These are the copyright dates of the original Debian Perl Policy.
+ Since then, this document has been updated by many others. No
+ comprehensive collection of copyright notices for subsequent work
+ exists.
+ </para>
+ <para>
This manual 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; either version 2 of the
diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
index b6db624..7d5a592 100644
--- a/policy.xml
+++ b/policy.xml
@@ -34,8 +34,10 @@
</abstract>
<copyright>
- <year>1996,1997,1998</year>
- <holder>Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz.</holder>
+ <year>1996</year>
+ <year>1997</year>
+ <year>1998</year>
+ <holder>Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
<para>
@@ -269,9 +271,9 @@
While the authors of this document have tried hard to avoid typos
and other errors, these do still occur. If you discover an error
in this manual or if you want to give any comments, suggestions,
- or criticisms please send an email to the Debian Policy List,
- <email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>, or submit a bug
- report against the <literal>debian-policy</literal> package.
+ or criticisms please send an email to the Debian Policy Mailing
+ List, <email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>, or submit a
+ bug report against the <literal>debian-policy</literal> package.
</para>
<para>
Please do not try to reach the individual authors or maintainers
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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