On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 05:10:52PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > On Sun, 07 Aug 2016 at 21:00:12 -1000, Josh Triplett wrote: > > Numerous packages use the MIT/Expat license, and currently all of those > > packages need to include it in their copyright files. > > Although Policy does not say so, the ftp-masters require the license > grant to be quoted in the copyright file, even for common-licenses. [1][2]
Can't quote something that doesn't exist in the upstream source. > For the Expat license and other simple licenses, the license grant *is* > the license, so putting it in common-licenses would make no difference > to the length or complexity of copyright files unless the ftp-masters > were willing to change their policy to accept something like > > Files: foo > Copyright: © 2000 Mickey Mouse > License: Expat > > (or its non-machine-readable equivalent) without any further text. I wouldn't suggest making it quite *that* concise, because that leaves out a human-readable cross-reference. I'd suggest an explicit reference, like this: Debian systems provide the MIT license in /usr/share/common-licenses/MIT > However, for the specific case of the Expat license, if I'm reading the > license correctly you are required to include the license grant with the > (binary form of the) software. For compiled code, the copyright file is > likely the most convenient way to achieve that. If the upstream source just says: license = "MIT" then that should suffice. > It would be great if Policy described what the ftp-masters actually > require and why, so that maintainers could provide everything that Debian > needs to avoid legal trouble but no more. At the moment, Policy is rather > more vague than the actual requirements to get software into Debian; there > seems to be some (unwritten?) policy based on ftp-master consensus. Agreed. I'd prefer a written policy, and preferably one that doesn't introduce any unnecessary boilerplate. - Josh Triplett
