Bug#884226: debian-policy: please add EPL-1.0 to common licenses

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi again,

Markus Koschany wrote:

> Let me try to explain it this way: Take src:ufoai-data or src:netbeans
> for example. Both packages ship approximately a dozen different
> licenses. I can't simply copy&paste the upstream license because I have
> to format it to make it copyright format 1.0 compliant.

Aha, that explains it.

Policy does not require using copyright format 1.0, but many packagers
choose to use it.  It sounds like we need better tools to help them.

But with a goal in mind of saving maintainer time, shouldn't we
discourage using copyright format 1.0 when the upstream LICENSE file
is clear?  (I personally think the maintainer time involved is very
little relative to the work of either manually or using tools
verifying that the license is correctly documented --- e.g. comparing
source file headers to the LICENSE file.  I'm just going along with
the saving time argument.  I suspect the best way forward will be to
improve tools.)

Thanks,
Jonathan