Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> writes: > To answer my own question it is stated here:
> http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s-copyrightfile > In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources > (if any) were obtained, and should name the original authors. > So definitely stated by Policy the original authors must be named. The way that I would interpret that section for a typical GNU package is that the Free Software Foundation is the original authors (assuming, of course, it was a GNU package). One *could* get more specific by listing the specific volunteers who did that work as part of the GNU project (but there isn't really a good spot for doing that other than a Comment section, as you mention), but I don't think Policy should be read as requiring that. To take a similar example, all the Shibboleth packages that I maintain just have the copyright notices for UCAID and do not attempt to document that much of the code was written by Scott Cantor. They could, I suppose, and I wouldn't *object* if someone did that, but prior to this thread it didn't even occur to me to read Policy in that way; UCAID is the legal author from a copyright perspective and the organization under whose aegis the development was done, and to me that always seemed to fit Policy's requirement. I think this section in Policy is ambiguous and not particularly well-worded. Historically, it significantly predates the DEP-5 format, and I always thought of it more as a place to record who was developing the upstream source alongside where one got it from. During development of DEP-5, what part there might be not covered by the Copyright lines ended up in the standard as Upstream-Contact, which implies several things: that "original" was taken to mean essentially "upstream," not "the first person to ever work on this source base," and that the point was taken more as a way of locating the original development. I'll go open a Policy bug about this to remember to hash out how to clarify it. It's possible that after further discussion my interpretation will be considered wrong by consensus, but as you mention, I think it's a common interpretation by other packagers of GNU software. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87oboalc8l....@windlord.stanford.edu
