Hello, On Fri 15 Aug 2025 at 12:27am +02, Ben Hutchings wrote: > Package: debian-policy > Version: 4.7.2.0 > Severity: normal > > The firmware-nonfree source package has files under many different > licenses, so there is no catch-all '*' pattern in debian/copyright. > > As a result, lintian complains: > > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information Apache-2 [debian/copyright] > [...] > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information GPL-2 [debian/copyright] > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information GPL-3 [debian/copyright] > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information LICENCE.Abilis [debian/copyright] > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information LICENCE.IntcSST2 [debian/copyright] > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information LICENCE.Marvell [debian/copyright] > [...] > W: firmware-nonfree source: file-without-copyright-information MIT [debian/copyright] > > and so on. > > The GNU licenses do include an explicit meta-license for verbatim > copying. However most license texts do not have this. Despite the > lack of that explicit meta-license, we are clearly intended and > (usually) required to copy them along with the works they apply to. > > The copyright format does not explain how such license text files > should be documented. Unless they are public domain, which I don't > think is correct, the paragraph listing these files is required to > include or refer to a (meta-)license text. But there is none that I > can point to. I think Lintian is just wrong to be warning about d/copyright. We don't apply DFSG requirements to license text itself, when including that license text purely because it's the license of some other thing we are actually interested in including. So, if we had a hypothetical collection of interesting licenses, that we were shipping for their own sakes and not for the sake of documenting the license terms of some other thing, that would be different; perhaps that collection would have to go in non-free if they didn't permit modification. But that's not what d/copyright is. So I think the answer to how such license text files should be documented is that they shouldn't be. -- Sean Whitton
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