Russ Allbery <[email protected]> writes: > I'm fairly sure (having read the relevant law several times, as well as > legal analyses of it) that Lintian's statement is correct in US law, > although possibly poorly phrased.
I have applied the following patch, which should hopefully make this clearer. commit 241c5664605045cc387d04cf60356a92a3ddf51c Author: Russ Allbery <[email protected]> Date: Sun Feb 12 12:47:56 2012 -0800 Clarify the legal status of copyright notices in long tag desc * checks/copyright.desc: + [RA] Rephrase copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright long description to be clearer about the legal status of copyright notices. (Closes: #659574) diff --git a/checks/copyright-file.desc b/checks/copyright-file.desc index 3af3823..921ad04 100644 --- a/checks/copyright-file.desc +++ b/checks/copyright-file.desc @@ -264,9 +264,15 @@ 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>. + <tt>(C)</tt> alone is not considered a valid copyright notice in at least + some countries. The word <tt>Copyright</tt> or the © symbol should be + used instead or in addition to <tt>(C)</tt>. + . + Copyright notices like this are, in any country that's a signatory to the + Berne Convention, not required to claim copyright on a work, but their + presence may allow claiming additional damages should a copyright case go + to court. If you provide a notice, you may as well provide one that's + legally valid. Tag: copyright-refers-to-bad-php-license Severity: serious diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog index e9ed224..1cfac2e 100644 --- a/debian/changelog +++ b/debian/changelog @@ -44,6 +44,10 @@ lintian (2.5.5) UNRELEASED; urgency=low + [NT] Accepted patch from Gergely Nagy to catch dh-make vcs templates in comments. Thanks to Paul Wise for suggesting this check. (Closes: #657110) + * checks/copyright.desc: + + [RA] Rephrase copyright-with-old-dh-make-debian-copyright long + description to be clearer about the legal status of copyright + notices. (Closes: #659574) * checks/cruft{,.desc}: + [NT] Added dh-autoreconf as a build-depends alternative to libtool for suppressing ancient-libtool warning. Thanks to -- Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
