On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:33:41 +1100 Ben Finney <ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Sune Vuorela <nos...@vuorela.dk> writes: > > > After a discussion on #debian-mentors and other places, I will not > > sponsor packages using the copyright file format described on > > http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat > > For those who weren't present when you were having that IRC > discussion, can you point us to archived discussions so that we can > see the points raised and discussed? I don't have a log, I'm afraid - don't know whether anyone else kept it. I've updated my own sponsoring requirements: http://people.debian.org/~codehelp/#copyright > > It is a too complex, overengineered solution to a very minor issue. > > I find it very surprising that someone can be a Debian developer and > consider copyright of works to be “a very minor issue” in Debian. The minor issue is the machine-operable format - I don't think Suno or any other sponsor considers debian/copyright itself as minor in any way. The format of debian/copyright is a minor issue, in so far as it does not impinge on accuracy. Where the format reduces human readability, I consider that a fault that I would rather avoid. > Can you point to a proposal (on another page) for an alternate format > that you feel passes these tests? A point during the early stage of that wiki page, something similar to what I currently use for one of my own packages (tslib). The wiki is probably the main problem - the objective has been lost in the subsequent edits. It surprised me just how far back I had to go to see what I thought was the version I was using: http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat?action=recall&rev=50 I may actually have been using a version earlier than that by the looks of it too. (Current revision is somewhere > 500) > > Too time consuming to write and check > > I find the structure makes it far easier to write and check than the > free-form chaos of many existing files. What would you have removed > from the format to reduce the time for writing and checking it? I completely disagree - the current version of the wiki page is utterly incomprehensible and inconsistent. It's no wonder that maintainers coming to debian-mentors are confused. > > Discussions about this is welcome, but I think debian-devel is a > > better forum for that. Agreed. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/
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