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Hi Andreas,<br>
<br>
thanks a lot for all of your explanations.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 20.11.23 22:49, Andreas Henriksson
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se"><span
style="white-space: pre-wrap"></span><span
style="white-space: pre-wrap">
</span>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">So some of the questions I'd be very happy if you could help me
understand are:
* Can non-legal entities be assigned copyright?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
normally not, but ...<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
* Can anyone just claim copyright belongs to someone else?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I am not sure I understand. Do you mean that one holds copyright for
something and somebody else claims to be the copyright holder? That
is not allowed.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
* Does Debian accept vague copyright holder descriptions like
"$PROJECT Contributors" (because that would make it really easy
for my future endaevors to document things in debian/copyright)?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
... you don't have to verify every details of the copyright. If
upstream just says that a group of people has the copyright for the
software, than that is the way it is. You must not be better than
upstream and verify who are the members of that group.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
* Also the AsahiLinux project themselves do not use years in their
copyright statements of their projects (see eg.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/AsahiLinux/speakersafetyd/blob/main/LICENSE#L1">https://github.com/AsahiLinux/speakersafetyd/blob/main/LICENSE#L1</a> ),
does this mean I should not list years in debian/copyright (rather
than extracting them from git revision history)?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, see above. If upstream wants it this way, it is fine. As a
maintainer you just have to collect the information that upstream
provides. Of course nobody will stop you from doing more. Some
upstream are even glad when you tell them about their wrong
copyright. But for a package to be accepted in Debian, this is not
needed.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
* When a project like apple-nvram's LICENSE file claim copyright year is
2022, despite a time machine would be needed since the currently
relevant "v3" apple proprietary data format was not made public to the
world until 2023, the reverse engineering happened in 2023 and the
parsing code was written in 2023.
Should I still repeat whats stated in the LICENSE file?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
On the first attempt, yes. If you know that something is wrong,
don't hesitate to open a bug upstream.<br>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap">
</span>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">For the three first questions above my previous understanding was that
the Debian project did not accept documenting something as copyrighted
by for example "public domain" when the author claimed so.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
The term public domain is less-than-ideal, but a package will be
accepted containing it. Better would be when upstream uses a license
like CC0, so again, upstream might be glad when you open a bug :-).<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20231120214945.cxs2v2yvc7b6mevs@fatal.se">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
For documenting years, if we extract those from git metadata, why
shouldn't we also do it with the rest of the information?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Some people do this for copyright holders, so when you want to go
this way, nobody would hinder you. But as far as I know there are no
tools to do this and doing it manually would be rather complex.<br>
<br>
Thorsten<br>
<br>
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