On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 01:20:21PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > > The files /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL and
> > > /usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL contain a number of formatting and
> > > minor spelling differences compared to the text files distributed
> > > by the FSF at <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt> and
> > > <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt>.  You should probably
> > > distribute the originals.
> >
> > hmm: if the files in /usr/share were copied from the same source at
> > an earlier date, they're just as qualified to be denoted "originals".
> >
> > Perhaps you had some other term in mind, such as "revised" or
> > "updated", but "originals" is inappropriate.
> 
> I obviously don't know every detail of the history of the files on both 
> sides, but I strongly suspect, for example, that the FSF address change 
> was made by editing the existing files in the package rather than 
> downloading the updated copies from the FSF; hence the spelling 
> differences like "St" vs "Street".

Not really - I checked some reference copies that I have at hand and see
that it was spelled "St" last year.
 
> Be that as it may, Debian should, in my opinion, distribute whatever the 
> FSF is distributing at the time, just to decrease the overall 
> randomness in the universe.

In an ideal universe, upstream would have a changelog noting when
and what was changed.  There's probably one - someplace.  I'd suggest
that someone find out rather than just copying whatever's on the web
site.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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