I’m helping a colleague with the packaging of the ‘hidapi’ package
(http://mentors.debian.net/package/hidapi).
In one of our Files: paragraphs, we have the following:
License: GPL-3.0 or BSD-3-clause or HIDAPI
At the discretion of the user of this library,
this software may be licensed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License v3, a BSD-Style license, or the
original HIDAPI license as outlined in the LICENSE.txt,
LICENSE-gpl3.txt, LICENSE-bsd.txt, and LICENSE-orig.txt
files located at the root of the source distribution.
These files may also be found in the public source
code repository located at:
http://github.com/signal11/hidapi .
(where each of the abbreviated names is specified in a separate stand-alone
license paragraph).
This triggers the following lintian warnings:
I: hidapi source: unused-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright bsd-3-clause
(paragraph at line 63)
I: hidapi source: unused-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright gpl-3.0 (paragraph
at line 88)
because split_licenses in source-copyright.pm ignores the abbreviated names in
any license block that has a long form.
My reading of DEP5 suggests that the License: block above is valid:
> First line: an abbreviated name for the license, or expression giving
> alternatives (see Short names section for a list of standard abbreviations).
> […]
>
> Remaining lines: if left blank here, the file must include a stand-alone
> License paragraph matching each license short name listed on the first line.
> 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. […]
I parse our License: block as having a first line with an “expression giving
alternatives,” and “remaining lines” that “include the full text of the
license(s).”
I don’t want to remove the “remaining lines” of the paragraph as I think it’s
important to keep the full text of the license as written. I don’t want to
remove the abbreviated name, as I think it has valuable pointers to the
standalone license paragraphs.
Is there a good option that I’m missing? I ask debian-policy because I believe
that either:
a) Lintian should be patched to not issue a warning in the situation I describe
b) DEP5 should be clarified to rule out my interpretation
c) (I have become confused, which is certainly possible)
The following change to source-copyright.pm eliminates the warning (but this is
intended to illuminate the working of the code, not as a recommended patch.)
--- source-copyright.pm 2013-08-31 04:47:23.000000000 -0400
+++ /usr/share/lintian/checks/source-copyright.pm 2014-02-05
12:05:24.734173128 -0500
@@ -260,7 +260,8 @@
sub split_licenses {
my ($license) = @_;
return () unless defined($license);
- return () if $license =~ /\n/;
+ # return () if $license =~ /\n/;
+ $license =~ s/\n.*//ms;
$license =~ s/[(),]//;
return map { "\L$_" } (split(m/\s++(?:and|or)\s++/, $license));
}
