Bug#459427: Patch seeking seconds on changelog vs. NEWS handling
On Wed, 25 Jul 2018 at 20:57:41 -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
> it, and giving a relevant date.
I don't think this is normally interpreted as requiring that *all*
modifications be listed, only that the existence of modifications is
obvious, or (to borrow wording from another popular license) the software
is not misrepresented as being the unmodified original source. Remember
that when the GPL was written, the expectation was that people would
receive Free Software on tapes or similar and would not be able to apply
the now-more-pragmatic policy of "if you want upstream's unmodified
version of GNU Hello, go and download it from GNU".
Debian packages have a Debian changelog and (when the source package
is included, without which we are not GPL-compliant anyway) a Debian
diff/tar, so there is certainly a prominent notice that we have modified
it. I am not a lawyer, but I believe this is enough for the letter and
spirit of the license: it tells a user "if you are looking for an
unmodified GNU Hello, this is not it".
smcv
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