Peter Eisentraut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > If the author of the work is an individual, then the copyright exists > some number of years past his lifetime. If the author doesn't write > "Copyright 2007" in his files, then I can't make that up. Moreover, the > exact years really don't matter much. Either the copyright exists, and > then we are presumably granted a suitable license, or it doesn't, in > which case we can use the work anyway.
This is a fairly rare case and other Debian Developers have in the past gone back to the upstream author and asked for a copyright notice in this case. Also, an override may be appropriate here for the case where that really isn't possible. Alternately, you can persuade Joerg to clarify what the ftp-master requirements are. I really want lintian to check based on what he's accepting or rejecting, and right now the reject FAQ is pretty explicit that you must list the copyright date and author. > The other part that is not really clear in the sources you cite is > author vs. copyright holder. I don't think it can be very successful to > attempt to squeeze the reality of authorship rights into a uniform > copyright statement. We need to explain to the user which rights he has > and how those rights came about, but there is no need to beat that into > a common form so lintian can parse it. On this, I guess I just disagree on the cost/benefit tradeoff. What lintian is asking for has been common practice on debian-mentors and there were two separate wishlist bugs filed asking for this check. It catches a lot of broken copyright files like: Copyright: GPL or copyright files that list the license with no mention of the copyright holder when the license requires that the copyright notice be preserved (all BSD- and MIT-licensed works). The benefit is really quite high, IMO. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
