Le Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 07:08:18PM +0100, Jon Dowland a écrit : > > Consider the situation where you have a package licensed entirely under one > license and predominantly authored by one or more persons, with the odd file > here and there authored by a different conjunction of people. In this case, > would the following > > Files: * > Copyright: John Doe <j...@example.org> > License: GPL-2+ > > Files: wibble.c > Copyright: John Doe <j...@example.org>, > Jane Doe <j...@example.org>
Dear Jon and everybody, In this simple example there is no ambiguity, but only because it is assumed that the package is licensed entirely under one license. This means that to implement your suggestion as is, a distinction would need to be introduced in DEP 5 between packages having only one license and packages having multiple ones. In my opinion, this is not desirable since problems would arise when Upstream introduces a file under a new licence in a work that only contained one (a conversion would be needed). To keep genericity, there needs a rule that decides from where a stanza with no License field will inherit the missing statement. One of the candidates sources is the most general stanza (Files: *), but its presence is not currently guaranteed by the DEP 5 format. Moreover, the Files field does not correspond to a requirement for being hosted in the Debian archive, and there were requests to make this field optional, so it may be better to not rely on its presence. The easiest alternative source is the the stanza that is just above the one where the License field is missing. However, the DEP 5 format is inspired by the Debian control file format, that does not have a concept of field inheritance between stanzas, so we may break the principle of least surprise. Nevertheless, I am much in favor of enhancements DEP 5 that allow a relaxed syntax. I am actually working other changes that follow this goal (http://git.debian.org/?p=users/plessy/license-summary.git), and would be very interested to see the patch you proposed to write. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
