Package: lintian Version: 2.5.4 Severity: important Tags: patch Summary:
copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright is giving a legally incorrect statement to lintian users in very annoying way. It is best removed immediately. -p0 patch attached. Explanation: copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright states: The copyright file contains the incomplete Debian packaging copyright boilerplate from older versions of <tt>dh_make</tt>. <tt>(C)</tt> is not considered as a valid way to express the copyright ownership. The word <tt>Copyright</tt> or the © symbol should be used instead or in addition to <tt>(C)</tt>. The fist sentence is correct but second and third sentences are legally wrong since 1988 even in USA. In 1988, USA finally joined "Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works"[1] by "Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988"[2]. (Almost all other industrialized nations signed it already by then.) This shifted the legal framework of copyright from Anglo-Saxon concept of "copyright" to the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur) and removed the general requirement for registration of copyright works and eliminated the mandatory copyright notice. Since then, "Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights"[3], reinforced this situation on copyright to almost all nations. The statement of "(C) is not considered as a valid way to express the copyright ownership." is even harmful for Debian if we accept this since this is a widely used method. Of course, having this text is a good indication of not being DEP-5 compliant. But that test is done separately and it is already marked "pedantic". So there is no point repeating it here. FYI: I know that the web page "How to use GNU licenses for your own software"[4] states: Always use the English word “Copyright”; by international convention, this is used worldwide, even for material in other languages. The copyright symbol “©” can be included if you wish (and your character set supports it), but it's not necessary. There is no legal significance to using the three-character sequence “(C)”, although it does no harm. But even on this web page, there is statement as follows: There is no legal requirement to register your copyright with anyone; simply distributing the program makes it copyrighted. (I have to admit, this GNU web page seems to be influenced by the pre-1988 Anglo-US legal requirements.) Also, I wonder if this recommendation is true, why we have the following in lintian source :-) $ grep -r "©" *|wc -l 25 $ grep -r "(C)" *|wc -l 203 Regards, Osamu [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_Implementation_Act_of_1988 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights [4] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
--- copyright-file.orig 2012-02-12 17:30:03.236256560 +0900 +++ copyright-file 2012-02-12 17:31:04.164558703 +0900 @@ -276,10 +276,6 @@ tag 'copyright-contains-dh_make-todo-boilerplate'; } -if (m,The\s+Debian\s+packaging\s+is\s+\(C\)\s+\d+,io) { - tag 'copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright'; -} - # Bad licenses. if (m/The\s+PHP\s+Licen[cs]e,?\s+version\s+2/si) { tag 'copyright-refers-to-bad-php-license'; --- copyright-file.desc.orig 2012-02-12 17:22:05.901889604 +0900 +++ copyright-file.desc 2012-02-12 17:30:42.460451081 +0900 @@ -259,15 +259,6 @@ check the whole source to find additional copyright/license, or that you didn't remove that paragraph after having done so. -Tag: copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright -Severity: wishlist -Certainty: certain -Info: The copyright file contains the incomplete Debian packaging - copyright boilerplate from older versions of <tt>dh_make</tt>. - <tt>(C)</tt> is not considered as a valid way to express the copyright - ownership. The word <tt>Copyright</tt> or the © symbol should be used - instead or in addition to <tt>(C)</tt>. - Tag: copyright-refers-to-bad-php-license Severity: serious Certainty: possible