Quoting Andrey Rakhmatullin (2026-06-15 15:48:56) > On Mon, Jun 15, 2026 at 01:44:48PM +0000, [email protected] wrote: > >>as recently was mentioned on #-dfsg, there's a not yet standardized > >>'Reference: /usr/share/common-licenses/[...]' field people are using, > >>and just switched to, too, e.g.: > >> > >>https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/g/gapless/copyright-4.6.1-1 > >> > >>how about moving from license 'summaries' to 'references' instead? > > > >I was not able to find a "Reference" field/stanze in the d/copyright > >standard. > >Is your linked copyright file valid? > > They said it's "a not yet standardized field".
Right. the machine-readable copyright format explicitly permits extending with not yet standardized fields, and Reference is such extension. It is discussed a bit at bug#786450. It is also not standardized to "invent" a license grant. What I mean by that is that there is a big difference between upstream saying "this project is licensed under GPL-2 or later" and a Debian package maintainer inventing(!) a statement like "On Debian systems, the full text is available at ...". What is standardized in the machine-readable license format is how to cite what upstream copyright holder stated. Package maintainers can grant licensing only for what they (arguably) hold copyright for themselves, i.e. most often only the debian/* part of the Package. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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