Bug#889820: debian-policy: 12.5, relaxed requirement for copyright location
Javier Serrano Polo <javier@jasp.net> writes:
> Copyright information, like changelogs and manuals, is not technically
> required by software.
> I propose this enhancement to section 12.5:
> Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its
> copyright information and distribution license in the
> file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright
> or /usr/share/doc/source-copyright/copyright; the latter may not
> be installed. [...]
> [...] and the first package Depends on the second.
> Alternatively, /usr/share/doc/package may not exist if the
> package Recommends source-copyright, which comes from the same
> source. [...]
Why would you not use the existing *-doc package construction, which seems
to accomplish exactly the same goal and is already fairly standard
practice for packages with large documentation directories?
> Additional benefits:
> 1. Putting this information in a separate architecture-independent
> package reduces repository disk usage.
The additional metadata required for the extra packages is going to
eliminate any possible gain you would get here.
> 2. It helps to solve the Multi-Arch file refcounting problem.
We've already solved that by not allowing different versions of multi-arch
packages to be simultaneously installed. To relax that constraint would
require dealing with far more than just the copyright file, and would need
a more comprehensive solution. So this doesn't really help one way or the
other.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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