volunteers wanted for driving/finalizing a DEP on debian/copyright format

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 07:16:44PM -0600, Raphael Geissert wrote:
> > Except that debtags are right now for binary packages, whereas
> > copyright is for source packages.
> 
> Err, not quite right:
> 
> Policy 4.5:
> > Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright and
> > distribution license in the file */usr/share/doc/package/copyright*[...]
> 
> Policy 12.5:

You are totally overlooking the reality of copyright files.

Yes, policy states that each binary package comes with a license, but
I believe you know that maintainers write exactly one copyright file
per *source* package which is then copied verbatim in each binary
generated by that source.

The reason is really simple: licenses and copyrights apply to source
files, which then get blended together (via linking usually, but can
be a lot of other processes) into binary packages.

There is no fully general and sane way to distribute copyright /
licensing information to binary files, and hence packages.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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