Bug#218105: tetex-base: woeful copyright file

[frank@kuesterei.ch (Frank Küster)]

James Troup <james@nocrew.org> schrieb:

> Package: tetex-base
> Version: 2.0.2-5
>
> | Some individual parts of this distribution may have their own
> | copyright.  Please look into the respective files for their copyright.
>
> The copyright file should list the license of all files, not tell you
> to look at random other files.  [Yes, I know this is a pain for large
> packages and lots of people don't do it, but...]

I find this quite impractical. It seems to me like following the
policy literally instead of following its purpose. If one is interested
in the exact license of a particular package, he'll find it harder that
way. If somebody wants to redistribute the whole thing, he has to read
everything anyway (or not, since tetex-base is in main?) 

Wouldn't it be better to just include a list of files with different
licenses and the exact location of the license files?

> | Seminar and KOMA-Script have changed their licenses recently but
> | there may still files that refer to their old copyrights.  Both are
> | copyrighted under the LPPL (LaTeX Project Public License) now. You
> | can find the text of the LPPL in the file
> | /usr/share/doc/tetex-base/lppl.txt.gz.
>
> The LPPL should be in the copyright file, not an external one.

It's common practice for GPL to include only two short paragraphs and
refer to the external /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL (perhaps we should
add LPPL there, too?). So why not do the same for tetex-base?

On the other hand, there is no tetex-nonfree any more. Therefore we
could kick the last paragraph out:

,----
| tetex-nonfree is (as the name says) not freely distributable. Please
| look into the individual files for the copyrights.
`----

Bye, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie