Bug#883950: Next steps on "[GPL-3+]" proposal
On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 01:26:29PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Julian Gilbey <julian@d-and-j.net> writes:
>
> > Just a straw poll: who sees /etc/motd these days? My system (probably
> > in common with many many users) boots into a graphical environment; I
> > only see the motd in the case that I ssh into my machine. So I'm
> > against removing the 'see /u/s/common-licenses' type wording in the
> > copyright file, unless the copyright file is no longer intended for
> > humans to be able to read and understand.
>
> Well, how many people ever look at /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright,
> though? I think it's reasonable to believe that if someone gets that far,
> they've either seen /etc/motd or know enough about Debian to know where to
> look for things.
>
> (I see it all the time, but I run Debian on servers.)
Well, /usr/share/doc is a standard FHS location,
/usr/share/common-licenses isn't, so I would think to look in
/usr/share/doc for information about a package (and the first time I
look there, I discover that Debian organises it by package). But I
wouldn't think to look in /etc/motd to find out where license texts
are stored - that's somewhat bizarre. I might look at the URL given
at the top of the copyright file if I were really bothered to find out
more about the format, but it still doesn't seem particularly arduous
to continue to include the standard license conditions in the
copyright file and a reference to /u/s/common-licenses: these files
are generally created once and then updated only as necessary.
Best wishes,
Julian
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