(-cc: the bug, since I am veering off topic) Charles Plessy wrote: > (In > particular, the discussion in #649530 highlights that some of the examples are > very artificial and turn quickly into cornercases in the real life, because > the > GPL and the MPL feature edited notices where the name of softwares or their > holders are edited).
Let me comment on this, since I think my understanding is lacking. Policy §4.5 says (and other sections repeat) that every package should be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright information and distribution license. Nobody seems to know what “verbatim” means, so I’m going to ignore that for the moment. In copyright-format, the license field in each Files paragraph contains the full text of a license or a pointer to a license file under /usr/share/common-licenses, or refers to a stand-alone License paragraph for each license short name listed. The spec also reminds the reader to comply with distro policy and any relevant requirements imposed by the license. Now. Unless the license itself has some relevant requirement on distribution of binaries, nothing mentioned above (except maybe the “verbatim”) requires the license headers from source files to be reproduced. It is the copyright information and the (verbatim) license that actually matter. Indeed, it is common practice to reformat the copyright information, for example by combining notices into a single list with one line per copyright holder. So: - I don't think GPL-covered works featuring diverse notices is actually a problem. If you preserve the notices in the source and accurately describe the copyright, license, and lack of warranty in the binary package, you're fine. And on the other hand, the need to reproduce BSD-style license texts verbatim means that their diversity is a real problem (and a well known one, I think). Is this wrong? - Policy could be clearer about “verbatim”. Proposal: change “verbatim copy of its copyright information and distribution license” → “copyright information and a verbatim copy of its distribution license”. What do you think? :) Worth a bug? Thanks, Jonathan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
