On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 11:43:29PM +0100, Alexander Toresson wrote: > For an application I'm currently helping with packaging, there are > many (source and non-source) files without license statements, of > which many don't even have a stated author. How do we handle these? Do > we need to investigate the license and/or author of each file, or is > it possible to assume that the files are under the main license of the > application, and are made by the main authors of the application?
Unless you have a specific reason to believe this is not the case, yes, it's a reasonable assumption that the files have the same copyright and license as the main body of the work. There is no requirement of per-file copyright notices. > Also, when using a machine-readable copyright file, do you need to > separate paragraghs for different authors? > http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#copyright-field > suggests that you would not need to do that, but I've gotten different > information from the main maintainer of the package. Provided that the license is the same, such that it's possible to express this as a single paragraph without being inaccurate, you don't need separate paragraphs. (E.g., if the source package contains source for two different programs, and the sources are freely but incompatibly licensed, don't just say Files: * License: License-1 and License-2 since that doesn't tell users anything about what their rights are.) -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org
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