user debian-pol...@packages.debian.org usertags 883950 = normative discussion thanks
Hello, On Thu, Dec 28 2017, Markus Koschany wrote: > the Policy editors request your attention and a decision regarding > Debian bug #883950: debian-policy: allow specifying common licenses > with only the identifier. > > Summary of the proposal [...] Thank you Markus for a great summary. We now know that we can go ahead with the main proposal to introduce the "[GPL-3+]" notation into our machine-readable copyright format. However, we still need to decide how we are going to hint to the local admin that "GPL-3+" means "GPL version 3 or any later version at your option". (The purpose is to keep the machine-readable copyright format basically readable without reference to the copy of the spec on the Debian web mirrors. So it's not the square brackets that we need to hint about. It's the '+'.) I suggested shipping the copyright format in base-files and referring to it using the Format: header. Joerg thinks that a shorter/smaller hint would be adequate and better than "duplicating" the copyright format -- though do note that we might be able to find a way to ship it that avoids any inconvenient duplication. I still think my proposal is best because it is forward-compatible with the introduction of other abbreviations into the copyright format. Once we know that the local admin has access to the full spec, we need worry much less about any new abbreviation which saves developer time but reduces the readability of copyright files. What are our alternatives here? What might a "README", as Joerg puts it, look like? All I can think of is a standard snippet to include in the Comment: field in the first paragraph of the copyright file, saying that foo-N+ means foo version N or any later version of the license at your option. Let's not rush choosing how we're going to provide this hint to the local admin. We want to be sure we get this decision right because it will be difficult to change it once the new abbreviation appears in copyright files across the archive. -- Sean Whitton
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