DEP-5: Structure for multiple copyright statements (was: DEP-5: general file syntax)

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes:
> > Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> writes:
>
> >> * Have one copyright statement per Copyright field, and have multiple
> >> instances of the field.
>
> > This is my preference, and what I've been doing in my packages.
>
> Unfortunately, this creates real challenges for parsers. […]

Okay, I can see that. Thanks for explaining.

Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> writes:

> On la, 2010-08-21 at 02:15 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > What happens when the copyright statement is longer than a line? I
> > have a bunch of those, such as:
>
> Good point. I see at least thw following possible solutions:
>
> * Keep one line per copyright statement, but make the lines be long.
> (This is what we have now.)

Could we take advantage of the natural “©” marker to indicate each
copyright statement? Specification off the top of my head, that
hopefully shows what I mean:

    The ‘Copyright’ field must contain one or more copyright statements.
    Each virtual line of the field value is a single copyright
    statement. Each copyright statement must begin with the “©”
    character (U+00A9 COPYRIGHT SIGN) at the start of a virtual line.
    Each physical line which does not begin with “©” is a continuation
    of the previous virtual line in the same field.

Contrived examples:

    Files: *
    Copyright: © 2009 Frank Foo <frank@example.com>

    Files: doc/*
    Copyright:
        © 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009 Beatrice
        Bar <beatrice@example.org>
        © 2008, 2010 Barry Baz <barry@example.com>

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Ben Finney