Bug#863052: cme update dpkg-copyright doesn't recognize comma in license

[Dominique Dumont]

On Saturday, 20 May 2017 22:56:46 CEST you wrote:
> I am using cme to update the copyright file of lazarus for a new upstream
> release. Althought I will not use the output in the package¹ I do notice
> that it doesn't recognize the meaning of one of the licenses:
> 
> License: GPL-2+ or MPL-1.1, and unicode
> 
> which is allowed by the spec²:

Indeed. There's a bug in the update function that does not deal correctly with 
these compound license names. This is fixed on my work copy and I'll upload 
soon.

> This is what triggered me:
> Deleting unused license: MPL-1.1, and unicode

Well spotted. 

> ¹ When a sub-directory has a different license than "*", cme makes different
> choices than I do. It look like it tries to find the "main" license and
> list the deviations from that, while I choose to list the deviations from
> "*". Also, I group multiple license holders with the same license under one
> group. Do you want me to file wishlist bugs against cme to have this as
> options?
> ² https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/

I don't think I can implement that. Even though scan-copyright could support 
this extra "packing",  I fear that the merge operation of existing copyright 
information with data from files would become much harder (and the code is 
already quite complicated as is).

There's also the question of handling the switch from one mode to another 
during merge, and where to store this option in a way that can be exchanged 
between packagers through the repository.

All in all, you can file bugs for the sake of the discussion, but I'll most 
probably flag them as "wontfix"

All the best



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