Bug#678607: debian-policy: "original authors" in 12.5 is unclear

[David Bremner]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2017 at 04:51:51PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> I'm not sure why Jonathan thinks his patch is a strawman.  It addresses
> the main issue of this bug.  I don't think the explanation of what an
> upstream contact is needs to be relegated to a footnote.  So I am
> seeking seconds for the following patch, which uses Jonathan's wording:
> 
> diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
> index ce5960b..725a951 100644
> --- a/policy.xml
> +++ b/policy.xml
> @@ -11777,8 +11777,12 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
>
>
>  In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
> -sources (if any) were obtained, and should name the original
> -authors.
> +sources (if any) were obtained, and should include a name or
> +contact address for the upstream authors.  This can be the
> +name of an individual or an organization, an email address, a
> +web forum or bugtracker, or any other means to unambiguously
> +identify who to contact to participate in the development of
> +the upstream source code.
>
>
>  Packages in the contrib or
> 
> -- 
> Sean Whitton

seconded



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: "original authors" in 12.5 is unclear

[Russ Allbery]

Sean Whitton  writes:

> I'm not sure why Jonathan thinks his patch is a strawman.  It addresses
> the main issue of this bug.  I don't think the explanation of what an
> upstream contact is needs to be relegated to a footnote.  So I am
> seeking seconds for the following patch, which uses Jonathan's wording:

> diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
> index ce5960b..725a951 100644
> --- a/policy.xml
> +++ b/policy.xml
> @@ -11777,8 +11777,12 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
>
>
>  In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
> -sources (if any) were obtained, and should name the original
> -authors.
> +sources (if any) were obtained, and should include a name or
> +contact address for the upstream authors.  This can be the
> +name of an individual or an organization, an email address, a
> +web forum or bugtracker, or any other means to unambiguously
> +identify who to contact to participate in the development of
> +the upstream source code.
>
>
>  Packages in the contrib or

Seconded.  This looks good to me.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   

Bug#678607: debian-policy: "original authors" in 12.5 is unclear

[Sean Whitton]

I would like to see this bug fixed because there can be no doubt that
the 'original' in "original authors" is ambiguous.

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 07:50:41PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Here's a strawman illustrating what I think the sentence meant to say.
> [...]

I'm not sure why Jonathan thinks his patch is a strawman.  It addresses
the main issue of this bug.  I don't think the explanation of what an
upstream contact is needs to be relegated to a footnote.  So I am
seeking seconds for the following patch, which uses Jonathan's wording:

diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
index ce5960b..725a951 100644
--- a/policy.xml
+++ b/policy.xml
@@ -11777,8 +11777,12 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
   
   
 In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
-sources (if any) were obtained, and should name the original
-authors.
+sources (if any) were obtained, and should include a name or
+contact address for the upstream authors.  This can be the
+name of an individual or an organization, an email address, a
+web forum or bugtracker, or any other means to unambiguously
+identify who to contact to participate in the development of
+the upstream source code.
   
   
 Packages in the contrib or

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Bart Martens]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 07:50:41PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
 Here's a strawman illustrating what I think the sentence meant to say.
 
 diff --git i/policy.sgml w/policy.sgml
 index 52dbb26a..adb0c1c4 100644
 --- i/policy.sgml
 +++ w/policy.sgml
 @@ -9873,8 +9873,15 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
  
   p
 In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
 -   sources (if any) were obtained, and should name the original
 -   authors.
 +   sources (if any) were obtained, and should include a name or
 +   contact address for the upstream authors.footnote
 + p
 +   This can be the name of an individual or an organization,
 +   an email address, a web forum or bugtracker, or any other
 +   means to unambiguously identify who to contact to
 +   participate in the development of the upstream source code.
 + /p
 +   /footnote
   /p
  
   p

I understand that there is confusion about the term original authors.

Some readers may argue that original authors means only the authors who
originally worked on the software without the current authors who may have
taken over upstream maintenance at a later time.  I personally understand
original authors as all upstream authors as in upstream to Debian so
including every author who ever worked on the upstream software.

Some readers may argue that an upstream contact may not be an author if
he/she maintains the upstream software only by accepting patches created by
others.  I suggest to not use the term author if we mean contact.

I think that it is OK to replace original authors by upstream contact.  I
think that this is more or less what Jonathan Nieder meant.

Regards,

Bart Martens



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Jonathan Nieder]

Bart Martens wrote:

 Some readers may argue that an upstream contact may not be an author if
 he/she maintains the upstream software only by accepting patches created by
 others.

If so, won't that be a problem everywhere else in policy that refers
to upstream authors?  For example in section 4.3:

If changes to the source code are made that are not
specific to the needs of the Debian system, they should be
sent to the upstream authors in whatever form they prefer
so as to be included in the upstream version of the
package.

And in section 10.1:

 Feel free to override
the upstream author's ideas about which compilation
options are best: they are often inappropriate for our
environment.

If the notion of an author of a compilation who didn't write any of
the individual parts is considered too subtle, these could be
changed to 'upstream maintainer' without changing the meaning.



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Bill Allombert]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 01:50:32AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 Jonathan Nieder jrnie...@gmail.com writes:
  Charles Plessy wrote:
 
  My personal opinion is that it is best to focus the Debian copyright file
  on the goal of respecting licenses and the copyright law, and to leave
  to the upstream documentation the difficult task of stating who is author
  and who is not.
 
  Just like naming the location from which the upstream source code was
  downloaded is useful, giving contact information (at least a name,
  mailing list, or web forum) for the upstream maintainer is useful, no?
 
  At least that is the rule I've followed in following this requirement
  in policy.
 
 The context in which this came up was GNU time.  A couple of people were
 primarily responsible for the development of the package, under the aegis
 of the FSF (which is the copyright holder, as with most GNU software).
 There has been no new upstream release since 1996 and those people are not
 apparently involved in development any more.  The contact point for the
 software officially is the bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org mailing list, which is a
 generic list for a variety of minor GNU packages.
 
 I think it's very unclear what Policy expects one to do with that.

I do not think it is such a big deal. GNU time come with a changelog file 
which says:

Thu Jul 11 12:37:17 1996  David J MacKenzie  d...@catapult.va.pubnix.com

* Version 1.7.

So the original author is David J MacKenzie.
bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org might be the new contact point, but since they did not 
make a single
release in all this time, I would not have too high expectation on their 
responsiveness.
(and I do not think policy should require updating the copyright file if the
upstream version did not change).

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. ballo...@debian.org

Imagine a large red swirl here. 



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Bob Proulx]

Bill Allombert wrote:
 Russ Allbery wrote:
  Jonathan Nieder writes:
   Charles Plessy wrote:
   My personal opinion is that it is best to focus the Debian copyright file
   on the goal of respecting licenses and the copyright law, and to leave
   to the upstream documentation the difficult task of stating who is author
   and who is not.

This is what I would prefer too.

   Just like naming the location from which the upstream source code was
   downloaded is useful, giving contact information (at least a name,
   mailing list, or web forum) for the upstream maintainer is useful, no?

The documented Upstream-Contact: field handles that case nicely.
Specifying the upstream contact isn't the confusing part.

  The context in which this came up was GNU time.  A couple of people were
  primarily responsible for the development of the package, under the aegis
  of the FSF (which is the copyright holder, as with most GNU software).
  There has been no new upstream release since 1996 and those people are not
  apparently involved in development any more.  The contact point for the
  software officially is the bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org mailing list, which is a
  generic list for a variety of minor GNU packages.
  
  I think it's very unclear what Policy expects one to do with that.
 
 I do not think it is such a big deal. GNU time come with a changelog file 
 which says:
 
 Thu Jul 11 12:37:17 1996  David J MacKenzie  d...@catapult.va.pubnix.com
 
 * Version 1.7.
 
 So the original author is David J MacKenzie.

But that is simply the most recent upstream changelog entry.  Using it
would ignore all of the previous contributors.  Plus the upstream
AUTHORS file attributes David Keppel with creating the original
version.  I think David Keppel would be attributed with being the
original author by a common language use of the term.  Even though
David MacKenzie contributed significantly, perhaps even to doing a
majority of the total effort to it, after that point.

 bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org might be the new contact point, but since they did not 
 make a single
 release in all this time, I would not have too high expectation on their 
 responsiveness.

Right.  There hasn't been any responsiveness from the currently
designated maintainer.  But other representatives of the GNU Project
do monitor and respond to that address.  Depending upon the query and
the issue you could hold a valid discussion there.

 (and I do not think policy should require updating the copyright file if the
 upstream version did not change).

There were two parts to this.  One is that the copyright file wasn't
completely correct and needed to be updated.  The other is the general
desire within Debian to use the new machine readable file format.  It
is listed as optional in a subsection of Policy but everywhere else it
is documented to the point that it looks like a requirement.  Since I
was modifying the copyright file I gave it my best attempt to use the
preferred format and in the development this issue raised discussion
from the differing opinions of what it meant and how it should be
implemented.

Bob


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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Jonathan Nieder]

Russ Allbery wrote:

 Policy 12.5 says:

 In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
 (if any) were obtained, and should name the original authors.

 The last part is not at all clear.  Prior to a recent conversation on
 debian-mentors, I had always assumed that this meant the legal authors,

Right.  That interpretation would render the requirement redundant
next to the need for copyright information, so I don't like it very
much.  (Maybe I'm in the minority, though?)

Here's a strawman illustrating what I think the sentence meant to say.

diff --git i/policy.sgml w/policy.sgml
index 52dbb26a..adb0c1c4 100644
--- i/policy.sgml
+++ w/policy.sgml
@@ -9873,8 +9873,15 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
 
p
  In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
- sources (if any) were obtained, and should name the original
- authors.
+ sources (if any) were obtained, and should include a name or
+ contact address for the upstream authors.footnote
+   p
+ This can be the name of an individual or an organization,
+ an email address, a web forum or bugtracker, or any other
+ means to unambiguously identify who to contact to
+ participate in the development of the upstream source code.
+   /p
+ /footnote
/p
 
p



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Bart Martens]

Hi Russ,

For completeness, since I was involved in the initial debate, here's my opinion 
on this bug:

I would welcome the removal of should name the original authors.  

I have currently no strong opinion on the other side-aspects I've read in the 
comments so far.

Regards,

Bart Martens



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2012, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
 Russ Allbery wrote:
  Would one list bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org?  That's the most useful contact
  point (and we have a copyright-format field for that), but it's not in any
  real sense the author.
 
 Sure it is --- it's the contact point for the people who create the
 code that goes into the upstream tarball.

I supposed it is best to call it upstream, instead of original
authors...

IMHO we might want to mandate installing the AUTHORS file when it contains
relevant information.  It is sort of a tribute to those who started the ball
rolling, and part of the giving back expected from downstream and users.

 I suspect the original intent of this piece of policy was to uniquely
 identify where the packaged source came from: I used such-and-such
 tarball, by such-and-such author.  I agree that the wording is a
 little crazy (because ambiguous).

We should clarify it, then...

-- 
  One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Russ Allbery]

Package: debian-policy
Severity: normal

Policy 12.5 says:

In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
(if any) were obtained, and should name the original authors.

The last part is not at all clear.  Prior to a recent conversation on
debian-mentors, I had always assumed that this meant the legal authors,
so for GNU software saying that it was maintained by the Free Software
Foundation satisfied what this was asking for.  Similarly for UCAID for
the Shibboleth software.  But discussion makes clear that other people
were interpreting this as a requirement to name the specific people
involved in development (something that is often documented in a
separate AUTHORS or THANKS or CREDITS file, and sometimes isn't
documented at all).

Similarly, original is ambiguous.  I had always assumed that meant
upstream, as in the current upstream maintainer, since it was paired
with the upstream location.  Those are the original authors from the
perspective of Debian, as opposed to the authors of the Debian package.
But other people interpret this as saying that debian/copyright needs
to name the original upstream authors, as in the first people to start
doing development on this source base.  I don't really see the point in
that unless we're going to list *all* the authors, given that it's often
the case that the people making the first commits have done only a small
amount of the total work on the package.

If we do decide that this means that we need to list the specific people
involved in upstream development, we should also add a new field to the
copyright-format standard for that, since there isn't one at present.
We should also say something about how much archeology we expect package
maintainers to do if upstream doesn't document this.

Note that a lot of FSF software currently packaged in the archive follows
my interpretation and would become buggy under a different interpretation.
See, for example, the copyright files for gawk, bash, coreutils (well,
it has a reference to a separate file), or bc.  (Other maintainers have
had different interpretations; see the copyright file for gnutls for one
that includes all the upstream authorship information.)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Charles Plessy]

Le Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 12:39:31AM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
 
 Policy 12.5 says:
 
 In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
 (if any) were obtained, and should name the original authors.

Dear all,

given that

 1) New packages that do not name the original authors (as opposed to the
copyright holders) in their Debian copyright file are accepted routinely
in our archives, and

 2) Once in our archive, it is very rare that they get a bug opened requiring to
correct that fact or at least document the reason for breaking a should
recommendation, and

 3) The must, may, and should words in the Policy are a mixture of
normative and non-normative uses, in particular for the older sections,

I think that it would be fair to align the Policy on the current practice and
clarify that naming the original authors, while not discouraged, is not 
required,
or simply delete this portion.

My personal opinion is that it is best to focus the Debian copyright file
on the goal of respecting licenses and the copyright law, and to leave
to the upstream documentation the difficult task of stating who is author
and who is not.

Have a nice week-end,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Jonathan Nieder]

Charles Plessy wrote:

 My personal opinion is that it is best to focus the Debian copyright file
 on the goal of respecting licenses and the copyright law, and to leave
 to the upstream documentation the difficult task of stating who is author
 and who is not.

Just like naming the location from which the upstream source code was
downloaded is useful, giving contact information (at least a name,
mailing list, or web forum) for the upstream maintainer is useful, no?

At least that is the rule I've followed in following this requirement
in policy.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Charles Plessy]

Le Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 03:38:05AM -0500, Jonathan Nieder a écrit :
 
 Just like naming the location from which the upstream source code was
 downloaded is useful, giving contact information (at least a name,
 mailing list, or web forum) for the upstream maintainer is useful, no?

Hi,

the problem is that the upstream maintainer, the contact information and the
original authors can be different persons.

It is an established practice to list upstream maintainers or contact
information in debian/copyright, but my personal opinion is that there are
betters containers for this information, that hopefully can be shared across
distributions.

Nevertheless, listing the original authors does not give an accurate
information about who currently develops a program, and who to contact.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Russ Allbery]

Jonathan Nieder jrnie...@gmail.com writes:
 Charles Plessy wrote:

 My personal opinion is that it is best to focus the Debian copyright file
 on the goal of respecting licenses and the copyright law, and to leave
 to the upstream documentation the difficult task of stating who is author
 and who is not.

 Just like naming the location from which the upstream source code was
 downloaded is useful, giving contact information (at least a name,
 mailing list, or web forum) for the upstream maintainer is useful, no?

 At least that is the rule I've followed in following this requirement
 in policy.

The context in which this came up was GNU time.  A couple of people were
primarily responsible for the development of the package, under the aegis
of the FSF (which is the copyright holder, as with most GNU software).
There has been no new upstream release since 1996 and those people are not
apparently involved in development any more.  The contact point for the
software officially is the bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org mailing list, which is a
generic list for a variety of minor GNU packages.

I think it's very unclear what Policy expects one to do with that.

Should the packager do the research to figure out the people who worked on
the software and document them somewhere in copyright?  In this case, it's
fairly easy, since it's a GNU package and there is therefore an AUTHORS
file, but does that information really belong in debian/copyright (as
opposed to just installing the AUTHORS file as supplemental
documentation)?  Those authors aren't useful for contact points; they've
not worked on the software in many years.

Is FSF the author?  That's what I'd normally list, and of course in that
case listing the copyright statement is sufficient, and that's the
organization for which the human authors volunteered, so to me it's the
author (in a collective sense).  It's also the author in the sense that if
anyone picks up new upstream development, it's very likely to be someone
else under the aegis of the FSF.

Would one list bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org?  That's the most useful contact
point (and we have a copyright-format field for that), but it's not in any
real sense the author.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Jonathan Nieder]

Charles Plessy wrote:

 Nevertheless, listing the original authors does not give an accurate
 information about who currently develops a program, and who to contact.

If original means upstream of Debian (i.e., where does this code
originate from?), then it gives exactly that.  As you might have
guessed by now, I think that until a README format or something
similar gets standardized, we should just clarify policy to require a
upstream contact in debian/copyright.  I don't think documenting who
wrote the first line of code is valuable.

Thanks,
Jonathan



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[Jonathan Nieder]

Russ Allbery wrote:

 Would one list bug-gnu-ut...@gnu.org?  That's the most useful contact
 point (and we have a copyright-format field for that), but it's not in any
 real sense the author.

Sure it is --- it's the contact point for the people who create the
code that goes into the upstream tarball.

Since bug-gnu-utils@ is the easiest way to coordinate future
development of time, it seems like just the thing to put there.
Saying The Free Software Foundation is almost as good because based
on that information I can find their website (which for some projects
is not the same as their distribution point) and their preferred
contact information.

I suspect the original intent of this piece of policy was to uniquely
identify where the packaged source came from: I used such-and-such
tarball, by such-and-such author.  I agree that the wording is a
little crazy (because ambiguous).

Jonathan



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Bug#678607: debian-policy: original authors in 12.5 is unclear

[gregor herrmann]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 00:39:31 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:

 Policy 12.5 says:
 
 In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
 (if any) were obtained, and should name the original authors.
 
 The last part is not at all clear.  Prior to a recent conversation on
 debian-mentors, I had always assumed that this meant the legal authors,
[..] 
 Similarly, original is ambiguous.  I had always assumed that meant
 upstream, as in the current upstream maintainer,

I agree that original authors is not clear, and I've also made the
same assumptions as you. - Getting the ambiguities fixed seems like a
good idea to me.

I'd be happy to either drop the original author part [copyright
information is in the first paragraph anyway] or to change it into
something like optionally the upstream contact information can be
named.

Speaking about the first paragraph

  Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its
  copyright information and distribution license in the file
  /usr/share/doc/package/copyright.

IIRC the verbatim copy has also led to confusion, maybe we could
change it to accurate or complete or something along these lines.


Cheers,
gregor

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