On Sunday, December 15, 2024 3:55:44 AM MST Sean Whitton wrote: > I saw that you reformatted copyright claims to drop the (C) and to add > commas. Generally licenses require us to reproduce copyright notices > verbatim. IANAL, but reformatting is probably not justified.
Generally, both licenses and copyright information must be reproduced verbatim. However, the *definition* of verbatim is different than how some people understand the word. Specifically, verbatim in licensing and copyright means the the *information* must not be changed, but the *formatting* may be changed. For example: 1. “years of publication for one copyright holder may be gathered together” https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#copyright-field 2. Indented periods replace empty lines in licenses in debian/copyright. Other examples involve switching the formatting of the file, like switching between HTML and ASCII, or switching the encoding, like switching between UTF-16 and UTF-8 (debian/copyright must be UTF-8). None of these are verbatim in the sense of a diff comparison, but they are all verbatim in the sense of all the original information being preserved. Similarly, using (C) or commas is a formatting decision, not an aspect of the verbatim meaning of the original text. -- Soren Stoutner so...@debian.org
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