Bug#218105: tetex-base: woeful copyright file
Hi all,
Atsuhito wrote that he wanted to fix this, and I have independently
started an attempt - both happened months ago.
I fear we will not be able to resolve this in a single effort. Rather I
suggest now that we first change the copyright file to provide the
"infrastructure" for the detailed license information, and only some
examples. After that, we should add the license information for every
package we get a bug report on, and if somebody has some spare time for
other packages. Thus we have a chance to gradually build a
policy-compliant copyright file.
It will take time, but we can eventually get there, which we won't if we
just wait that working time falls from heaven that would allow one of us
to do it once and for all.
I propose to keep only a classifcation of packages with respect to their
licenses in debian/copyright, and a detailed list of all files that
belong to a package in a separate file, Copyright.files. I have also
started to write a script that would look through the sources and check
whether a file has yet been classified this way, but it's not complete
yet.
The new copyright file I propose is attached below. It is only a first
draft, but I am going to check it into our CVS anyway, because I think
it is better than the previous one.
I have only added the license information for the packages I added or
updated to our license-clarification-orig.tar.gz. I haven't yet put the
information into the new files that has been gathered in this bug so
far, which could be a first improvement.
So here comes the proposed copyright file:
********************************
Copyright file for tetex-base, tetex-extra and tetex-doc.
Table of contents:
1. Copyright and License of the debian-specific adaptations
2. License of the teTeX distribution as a compilation work
3. (incomplete) list of licenses of individual parts
4. Text of the licenses
1. Copyright and License of the debian-specific adaptations
Debian adaptations for this Package are under Copyright by:
Christoph Martin christoph.martin@uni-mainz.de (1998-2002)
Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> (2000-2002)
C.M. Connelly <cmc@debian.org> (2002)
Atsuhito KOHDA <kohda@debian.org> (2002-)
Hilmar Preusse <hille42@web.de> (2003-)
Stefan Ulrich <stefan-ulrich.nntp@zen.co.uk> (2003-)
Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch> (2003-)
Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> (2004)
This list has been compiled in July 2004, therefore it is probably
incomplete (missing names and too short date ranges). Contributors of
translations and other small patches are mentioned in
changelog.Debian.
The package was downloaded from CTAN:/systems/unix/teTeX
--------------
2. License of the teTeX distribution as a compilation work
The teTeX distribution, i.e. the tetex-base, tetex-extra and tetex-doc
packages, together with the tetex-bin and tetex-src packages, is
Copyright by Thomas Esser (199?-).
The teTeX distribution is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.
On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public
License may be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.
--------------
3. (incomplete) list of licenses of individual parts
The GPL applies to the teTeX distribution as a compilation work.
Individual parts of this distribution have their own copyright and
license.
We are attempting to provide comprehensive information on the licenses
of all files in the package, but this is ongoing work. Below you can
find a list of packages grouped by their license. (A "package" in this
sense is a bunch of files on the CTAN servers, usually one
subdirectory, with common copyright; the files in a package may be
installed in different locations in below /usr/share/texmf.) In the
accompanying file Copyright.Files you can find a list of files that
belong to each package. The actual text of the licenses (or a
reference to a separate file) is given at the end of this file
(copyright).
Therefore, if you want to know the license of a specific file, first
look up the package it belongs to in Copyright.Files, and then the
license of the package in this file, and it's text below. If you
cannot find the file in Copyright.Files, this means we did not yet
have time to look up it's license and include it in the list. In this
case, you have to look up the license: Often it is in the file itself,
sometimes you have to find out which package it belongs to, and look
into the file that describes it's license information (a file named
README, COPYING or similar). In some cases, the license information
may not be included any file installed with tetex-base, tetex-extra or
tetex-doc, but in the source in the tetex-src package.
If you had to figure out the license of a file or package this way,
please submit your results as a bug report, so that we can include it
here - thanks in advance!
--------------
--------------
Files or packages marked with a * have a "or later" versioning
clause. Otherwise, the license version is indicated in parentheses.
A. Packages with unclear or problematic licenses
- euler: LPPL according changelog, but no indication in file.
- listings: LPPL, plus:
,----
| *Modification*advice*
|
| Permission is granted to modify the listings package as well as
| lstdrvrs.dtx. You are not allowed to distribute a modified version of
| the listings package or lstdrvrs.dtx unless you change the file names
| and provide the original files. In any case it is better to contact
| the address below; other users will welcome removed bugs, new
| features, and additional programming languages.
plus a "README.comment-on-license" that does not refer to this
"invariant section" problem.
*****
B. Packages that are licensed under the GPL
- individual files, not belonging to any package:
gahyph.tex*
*****
C. Packages that are licensed under the LPPL.
- individual files, not belonging to any package:
cahyph.tex*
icehyph.tex*
ruhyphas.tex*
ruhyphzn.tex*
sehyph.tex*
- LaTeX packages
caption*
g-brief*
listings*
*****
D. Packages that are licensed under the Artistic License
fvrb-ex (2)
--------------
--------------
4. Text of the licenses
B. GPL (Gnu General Public License)
On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public
License may be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.
C. LPPL (LaTeX Project Public License)
The full text of the LPPL is given in
/usr/share/doc/tetex-base/lppl.txt.gz
D. Artistic license
On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public
License may be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic
********************************
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
Reply to: