Sent message incorrectly to debian-mentors-request instead of debian-mentors. Correcting.
-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Copyright in LGPL projects Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2024 11:10:58 +0530 From: Alan M Varghese <a...@digistorm.in> To: 1065...@bugs.debian.org CC: Matthias Geiger <werdah...@riseup.net>, SmartList <debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org> Hello Mentors, I have been working on packaging Hyprland window manager. hyprlang[0] (with a 'g') is a new dependency for this project. This project (hyprlang) is licensed under LGPL. But, the project authors haven't included a copyright notice anywhere in the project. It turns out that the authors are not sure if this is required for an LGPL project[1]. From a Debian perspective, what is the recommendation regarding this? Do we require projects to include the copyright information along with LGPL? If the copyright *has* to be included, is it enough to include it in a COPYRIGHT file? I couldn't find an example of a project that does this. Most projects seem to include a copyright line along with a short form of LGPL in each file. (I think it may be more appealing to upstream authors if we don't have to include the copyright in every file). For example, libplacebo[2] is a library I found installed on my system that uses LGPL. This project does not have a common copyright file, but there are copyright notices in some source files[3]. While some other source files in this project do not have a copyright notice[4][5][6]. Note: my doubts are specifically regarding the LGPL license. For other licenses like BSD, I see both practices of including a COPYRIGHT file as well as a short copyright notice in each file, or a combination of the two. Thanks, Alan M Varghese [0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1065352 [1] https://github.com/hyprwm/hyprlang/issues/28 [2] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo [3] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo/-/blob/master/src/dither.c?ref_type=heads [4] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo/-/blob/master/src/dummy.c?ref_type=heads [5] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo/-/blob/master/src/cache.c?ref_type=heads [6] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo/-/blob/master/src/colorspace.c?ref_type=heads
