On 11-05-20 at 07:53pm, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: > 1) The description of the License field says: > >Otherwise, this field should either include the full text > >of the license(s) or include a pointer to the license file under > >`/usr/share/common-licenses`. > > This could be interpreted as if just the pointer would be enough, > which is however (AFAIU) not what is meant by the policy 12.5, which > says a verbatim copy must be included and the pointer is (AFAIU) just > something that should be given in addition?!
DEP-5 is an (optional!) addition to Debian Policy: Nothing in DEP-5 overrides requirements in Debian Policy. I suspect such false interpretation could only occur if only reading DEP-5 (not Debian Policy), which is bad in itself. It is wrong approach IMO to extend DEP-5 with material from Debian Policy - instead the relationship with Debian Policy should be emphasized if needed. > 2) In general it might be worth suggest that pointer being given in > the Comment field, IMO it's not really part of the license. e.g. > >Comment: On Debian systems, the full text of the “GNU General Public > >License version 3” can be found in the file > >“/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3”. > > But then one would possibly also need to allow the Comment field for > the stand-alone License paragraphs. Hmm - This sounds very much like my current practice. I use the License field strictly for verbatim copied text, so as to allow potential future automated verifications of it. Commonly I move 2 kind of info into a Comment field: a) reference to actual license when applicable b) reference to canonical source of license The reason for b) is our common practice in Debian to update/replace that when upstream reference is obsolete - which in effect renders the text no longer a verbatim copy. Is the following (from packaging of 4store, but similar to ~100 other packages) in violation with current DEP-5?: License: LGPL-2.1+^GNULibC The GNU C Library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. . The GNU C Library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. Comment: On Debian systems the full text of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 can be found in '/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-2.1'. . You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. > 3) Just a cosmetic/perfectionist issue: > People would probably simply use the examples in DEP5 for the > formulation of their pointers, currently: > >On Debian systems, the full text of the GNU General Public License > >version 2 can be found in the file > >`/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2'. > may I suggest, as we have UTF-8 and so anyway to use the "right" > quotation marks, and perhaps also to quote the name of the license, so > that we'd have: > >On Debian systems, the full text of the “GNU General Public License > >version 2” can be found in the file > >“/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2”. Good point. I like that. Just as that suddle change of implicitly using it in examples - not explicitly encouraging it in text. ...but not a strong point: I suggest to keep this in mind for a later revision of DEP-5, and let the current one become final as-is. Kind regards, - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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