On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 11:03:43AM -0700, Chris Waters wrote: > On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 12:15:49PM +0100, Julian Gilbey wrote: > > > I would suggest a file with fields like the control files, something > > like (comments with #'s): > > > Package: foo > > Debianized-By: Debian Maintainer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Debianized-When: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 12:09:09 +0100 # output of 822-date > > Copyright: GPL > > The GPL isn't a copyright, it's a license. We need to list the > copyright holder as *well* as the license. If we were to do this > (which I'm not sure is a good idea), we should at least name the > fields sensibly:
Fair enough. > Copyright: Joe Programmer and Bob Hacker, 1996-1999 > License: GPL > License-details: see /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL > > > Copyright-non-freeness: # Brief details of non-freeness here > > Again, "License-non-freeness:". Agreed. > The last time a similar suggestion was made, it was pointed out that > > a) there can be a lot of ways that packages can violate the DFSG > b) we're not in the business of supporting non-free. So allow people to say "read the license" ;-) > The idea of listing the reasons for non-freeness was rejected as being > too much work for stuff we don't care about. I'd add, on top of that, > that rewriting 6000 copyright files (for main+contrib+non-free) is a > HUGE amount of work. I don't think the reasons I've seen posted here > are sufficient to justify the amount of work required. > > I'm not opposing the idea, just raising some quibbles and doubts. It seems that the primary reason suggested for rewriting the copyright files was independent of the freeness issue: it was to make them machine parseable so that they could be automatically tested for missing information. The non-freeness bit was a little extra thing. Oh, and I forgot a field: Upstream-URL: http://www.get.from.here/this/directory Julian -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg Donate free food to the world's hungry: see http://www.thehungersite.com/
