ignoring autotool in debian/copyright?

Reinhard Tartler siretart at tauware.de
Thu Dec 1 09:18:21 UTC 2011


On Do, Dez 01, 2011 at 09:57:44 (CET), Fabian Greffrath wrote:

> Am 01.12.2011 08:20, schrieb Reinhard Tartler:
>> Thank you very much for stating your opinion such clearly. I fully
>> concur with your view on DEP-5!
>
> While I also agree with your opinion with regard to documenting the
> licensing of auto-generated files (and most parts of the GNU auto* build
> system, FWIW) I have to disagree with your statement that code which
> does not end up in binaries does not have to get documented in
> debian/copyright.
>
> In my understanding, said file is to document the license and copyright
> situation of the packages that Debian offers - but Debian does also
> offer the source package, it is not limited to binary packages! If your
> source ships a convenience copy of a library which you do not link
> against - which you maybe do not even compile, because you build against
> the system library - then of course the license of this code has to end
> up in debian/copyright.

I hear this opinion at many places, but it does not match my
understanding of Debian Policy (cf. sections §2.3, §12.5). The very
first sentence reads like this:

,----[ Debian Policy §2.3 / §12.5
| Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright
| information and distribution license in the file
| /usr/share/doc/package/copyright. This file must neither be compressed
| nor be a symbolic link.
`----

While I understand that you are trying to extend the rules to source
packages, the phrasing implies to me that policy does not talk about
source packages here at all.

And thinking more about it, source packages do already have proper
copyright information in the source package, mostly in some COPYING or
README file or in the respective sources. So legally, there is no
necessity to collect and condense all this information in a single file
"debian/copyright". Doing so may be a great service for people that work
on the source packages, right, but I really don't think this is
currently a requirement, nor should maintainers be forced to do so.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4



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