Bug#883950: Next steps on "[GPL-3+]" proposal
Russ Allbery writes ("Bug#883950: Next steps on "[GPL-3+]" proposal"):
> Markus Koschany <apo@debian.org> writes:
> > I have a hard time to imagine what kind of breakage might occur with
> > those non-Lintian parsers.
>
> It's pretty straightforward: currently, a License field must either
> contain an extended paragraph or references one elsewhere in the document.
> Therefore, whenever a parser sees a License field without an extended
> paragraph, it currently knows (and expects) there to be a stand-alone
> license paragraph later in the document. But with this change that
> paragraph wouldn't exist.
I am against the version number change. Version numbers, and
particular version number bumps, in protocols like this are a very
heavy hammer. Where present, they should be bumped only when
necessary. They are necessary only when a tool which is written to
the old format will *do the wrong thing* with the extended format.
If a reasonable tool written to the old format will either do a
plausible thing, or reject the input, if fed the new format, then it
is a bad idea to bump the version number.
That is the case here.
TBH I think even having a version number at all in the
machine-readable copyright format is quite possibly a mistake.
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
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