Hi folks, Sorry to bother you again so soon.
In returning my attention to current Debian packaging practices and conventions I took my first serious look at good old DEP5, and brought the debian/copyright file for my first-ever package, xtrs[1], into conformance with the new[2] standard[3]. However, in doing so, I encountered some use cases that are not covered by this standard. Happily, all of them triggered lintian warnings as well, which gives me a framework within which to present my problems. The attached debian/copyright file may also illuminate these matters. W: xtrs source: empty-short-license-in-dep5-copyright (paragraph at line 48) N: N: The short license field in the machine readable copyright file is empty. N: N: Refer to N: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ for N: details. N: N: Severity: normal, Certainty: possible N: N: Check: source-copyright, Type: source N: 1. I left this field blank because there are several files which bear no copyright notice at all. There is also no "top-level" copyright for this package, and some of the files are probably not copyrightable anyway, or are not independent works from other files in the distribution. (See my Comment in the file.) I would like a successor to DEP, call it DEP5++ for the nonce, to give me a mechanism for declaring that a set of files fall into one of these categories which are not really subject to machine analysis. This is not a rare or unusual case. Based on my work experience in this area, I am strongly confident that this issue affects many, many packages in main. Many of them are old, or come from the BSD tradition, or are from authors who for whatever reason simply don't care to slap a copyright notice on everything in sight. My ask: As a package maintainer, I'd like a way to designate files in my package as having been reviewed by me and, in my opinion, are at least as freely licensed as some license used elsewhere in the package, and which I impute to these files for analytical convenience. W: xtrs source: missing-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright timothy mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license (paragraph at line 142) N: N: The files paragraph in the machine readable copyright file references a N: license, for which no standalone license paragraph exists. N: N: Refer to N: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ for N: details. N: N: Severity: normal, Certainty: possible N: N: Check: source-copyright, Type: source N: 2. DEP5 is asking me to violate DRY. It seems like a terrible idea to do this. I've already pasted the license boilerplate into this file once, why can't I take advantage of that by citing to it by some form of reference? Why don't I just merge the filename patterns in with the first occurrence of the license boilerplate? Because the copyright holder is different. This package has 4 different copyright holders[5] and 2 different licenses in it. 3 of those 4 copyright holders use the "Tim Mann xtrs license", and the last, the original authors of xtrs, Clarendon Hill Software, use another, which is just as permissive but not as terse or clean. My ask: As a package maintainer, I'd like to be able to designate a license expression as an anchor to which subsequent Files->License fields can refer, reducing the length, redundancy, and human parse time of the document. As a fan of YAML, I'd be thrilled if I could do something like this: Files: foo.c bar.c Copyright: 2013 Moe Szyslak License: *FOOBAR-1 This program is free and libre software; yadda yadda yadda... . This program is distributed in the hope that yadda yadda yadda... . You should have received a copy of the Foo Bar License yadda... Files: baz.c Copyright: 2017 Branden Robinson License: &FOOBAR-1 W: xtrs source: space-in-std-shortname-in-dep5-copyright timothy mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license (paragraph at line 142) N: N: The license header contains a short name with a space, which does not N: conform to the specification. N: N: Refer to N: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ for N: details. N: N: Severity: minor, Certainty: certain N: N: Check: source-copyright, Type: source N: W: xtrs source: space-in-std-shortname-in-dep5-copyright clarendon hill software xtrs permissive non-copyleft license (paragraph at line 89) 3. This one's relatively simple. What sort of identifier am I suppose to use if a license in use by my package appears neither in the Debian spec[3] nor in the SPDX license list[6]? I guess I can make up my own, but shouldn't we offer the package maintainer a bit more guidance in this respect? Shouldn't we have some naming conventions[7]? I spoke to Paul Wise on #debian-devel about this and he noted that (I'm paraphrasing) Debian institutionally does not feel bound to SPDX namespace or analytical precedents. That's fine, but tools and users need to be able to recognize the difference between "GPL-2" and "GPL-2.0". The first is our short name, the second is SPDX's. That's not going to be obvious to many people. I think packagers should be free to use SPDX license identifiers if they want to (upstream might also do this). My ask: As a package maintainer, I want namespaces for brief designators of licenses. I think we need at least three: A. Debian's, as maintained by the Policy Manual maintainers; B. SPDX's; and C. package-private ones, which is my immediate use case. I propose that (A) be implicit, (B) require an "SPDX:" prefix, and (C) require a prefix of a form I'm not sure of yet--maybe "package:", "private:", or "local:". I humbly and eagerly await your feedback. Regards, Branden [1] popcon score: 3; the fates of nations hang on this package! [2] to me [3] https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ [4] Indeed, such slathering is sometimes done to excess. The XFree86 team used to run a script every year to "bump" the year expressions in their copyright notices regardless of whether any copyrightable changes had been made to a file in the previous 12 months, or even regardless of any changes at all. They were and are not alone in this practice. [5] Don't look now, but as the author of the cpmutil.html document, Roland Gerlach likely has copyright on it as well. [6] https://spdx.org/licenses/ [7] Apart from "don't put spaces in there", which is documented, and "the license 'short name' you chose is way too long", which is obvious, not documented, but one way to avoid namespace collisions.
Format: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ Upstream-Name: xtrs Source: http://www.tim-mann.org/xtrs.html Disclaimer: Requires non-DFSG-free ROM images and/or operating systems to be useful for most purposes. . There is a freely-licensed boot ROM for Model 4P emulation provided with xtrs; however, this boot image can only be used to boot an operating system designed for the Model 4 (it is not sophisticated enough to load the BASIC interpreter ROM for Model III compatiblity mode, provided on Model 4P TRSDOS disks as a file called MODELA/III). Since most users will likely be using this emulator to run proprietary legacy applications for the TRS-80 computers, I do not regard this exception as sufficient to recategorize xtrs for inclusion in main. . It is worth keeping an eye on projects like Contiki and FUZIX; if one of them becomes useful under xtrs, that would be an argument for moving xtrs to main. + http://www.contiki-os.org/ + https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX Comment: ChangeLog Makefile cassette cassette.man cassette.sh cassette.txt cpmutil.html crc.c do6.jcl dskspec.html expall.bas fakerom.lst fakerom.z80 hex2cmd.man hex2cmd.txt m1format.fix mkdisk.man mkdisk.txt reed.h trs_chars.c utility.jcl xtrs.man xtrs.txt contain no copyright notices. I (Branden Robinson) presume them to be under Tim Mann's license (see below). Some of them are plainly derived from others (such as cassette.txt from cassette.man), and some may have been written by other people (e.g., cassette.sh was written by me, albeit obviously a it's a sort of transliteration of cassette [csh]). Files: * Copyright: 1998 Timothy Mann License: This software may be copied, modified, and used for any purpose without fee, provided that (1) the above copyright notice is retained, and (2) modified versions are clearly marked as having been modified, with the modifier's name and the date included. Files: cd.ccc mount.ccc pwd.ccc truedam.ccc umount.ccc unix.ccc xtrs8.lst xtrs8.z80 xtrshard.lst xtrshard.z80 xtrsmous.lst xtrsmous.z80 Copyright: 1998 Timothy Mann License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license This software may be copied, modified, and used for any purpose without fee, provided that (1) the above copyright notice is retained, and (2) modified versions are clearly marked as having been modified, with the modifier's name and the date included. Files: cmd.[ch] hex2cmd.c trsdisk.[ch] trs_imp_exp.[ch] trs_interrupt.c Copyright: 1996 Timothy Mann License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Files: cmddump.c load_cmd.[ch] mkdisk.c Copyright: 1996-98 Timothy Mann License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Files: compile_rom.c config.h debug.c dis.c error.c load_hex.c main.c trs.h trs_cassette.c trs_io.c trs_iodefs.h trs_keyboard.c trs_memory.c trs_printer.c trs_xinterface.c z80.[ch] Copyright: 1992 Clarendon Hill Software License: Clarendon Hill Software xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Permission is granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, or redistribute this software, provided this copyright notice is retained. This software is provided "as is" without any expressed or implied warranty. If this software brings on any sort of damage -- physical, monetary, emotional, or brain -- too bad. You've got no one to blame but yourself. . The software may be modified for your own purposes, but modified versions must retain this notice. Files: export.lst export.z80 import.lst import.z80 settime.ccc xtrsemt.ccc xtrsemt.h Copyright: 1997 Timothy Mann License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Files: settime.lst settime.z80 Copyright: 1998 Ulrich Mueller License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Files: trs_hard.[ch] trs_uart.[ch] Copyright: 2000 Timothy Mann License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Files: xtrsrom4p.README xtrsrom4p.lst xtrsrom4p.z80 Copyright: 1999 Peter W. Cervasio License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license Files: debian/* Copyright: 1998-2006, 2008, 2017 Branden Robinson <[email protected]> License: Timothy Mann xtrs permissive non-copyleft license # vim:set ai et sw=2 ts=2 tw=80:
