>> We now know that we can go ahead with the main proposal to introduce the >> "[GPL-3+]" notation into our machine-readable copyright format. [...] > I can't contribute much to > the further discussion because I believe the quintessential points were > already discussed and approved and the only thing left is merely to > document and announce it.
I do not believe there is anything like consensus on the introduction of brackets like this and, to the contrary, I think it is more likely a rough consensus that this proposal can proceed *without* the addition of brackets, modulo approval from ftp-master. The brackets are cryptic, unnecessarily, and complicate the format for those trying to machine parse it (which is, after all, a significant reason for the format to exist). Let us consider this proposed syntax in terms of what someone unfamiliar with the format is going to see: Files: foo/*.c License: [GPL-3+] The proposal is that the user is to get from that particular sequence of 8 characters to the meaning: On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License, can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3. via documentation such as /usr/share/common-licenses/README and/or /etc/motd. However, if the user knows to look in some documentation to read "[...] means look in /usr/share/common-licenses", then we can equally assume that we can just include in the exact same documentation "You will find common license texts in /usr/share/common-licenses". Conversely, claiming that a user might not find the documentation to know to look in /usr/share/common- licenses is also to claim that they would not know to look in the documentation to find what [...] means. Either we believe: * the users can find the docs and the brackets are unnecessary, or * the users cannot find the docs and this entire proposal to omit the boilerplate text is unacceptable. I do not see a third option where the brackets convey additional information. >From my perspective, the brackets are only making work for people who will have to rewrite parsers because the license short names are not the opaque tokens originally given in copyright-format/1.0.* Given they are unnecessary and actively harmful, let's not adopt this syntax. Stuart * almost opaque, given "+" and the equivalence of trailing dot-zeros -- Stuart Prescott http://www.nanonanonano.net/ stu...@nanonanonano.net Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/ stu...@debian.org GPG fingerprint 90E2 D2C1 AD14 6A1B 7EBB 891D BBC1 7EBB 1396 F2F7 -- Stuart Prescott http://www.nanonanonano.net/ stu...@nanonanonano.net Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/ stu...@debian.org GPG fingerprint 90E2 D2C1 AD14 6A1B 7EBB 891D BBC1 7EBB 1396 F2F7
