debian/copyright

[Alessandro Ghedini]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 11:33, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:55:14AM +0100, Alessandro Ghedini wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:24:44PM -1000, Joel Roth wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 08:19:55PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>>> > On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 08:29:04AM -1000, Joel Roth wrote:
>>> > >I'm working on Ecasound's copyright file. Would like to ask for a >
>>> > > >review.
>>> > >
>>> > >This project has lots of contributors with different dates in >
>>> > > >different files.
>>> > >
>>> > >The catchall entry points to the original developer covering all >
>>> > > >years listed in the project files.
>>> > >
>>> > >Files: *
>>> > >Copyright: 1997-2010 Kai Vehmanen <kvehmanen at eca.cx>
>>> > >License: GPL-2+
>>> >
>>> > Was there an implicit question somewhere in the above?
>>>
>>> Not from me. Alessandro, was there something you
>>> wanted to ask about?
>>
>> Yes. Currently the debian/copyright for ecasound lists all the different
>> contributors to the software, but having a look at the licensecheck output
>> some (one in particular) contributors are listed with different copyright
>> years ranges (for different files of course), e.g.:
>>
>>  Copyright: 2002-2010 Kai Vehmanen
>>  Copyright: 1999-2004,2007 Kai Vehmanen
>>  Copyright: 1997-2010 Kai Vehmanen
>>
>> and many others. The question is, do we need to list all this copyright
>> statements, or we can just use a single catch-all copyright years range
>> for
>> this contributor?
>>
>> Hope this makes sense to you :)
>
> Makes perfect sense with this clarification, thank you.
>
> My understanding of Debian Policy is that debian/copyright must include all
> copyright holders and must include verbatim copies of licensing statements.
>  Which means it is _not_ a requirement to list all contributors/authors
> (only copyright holders) and need not list copyright holders verbatim (only
> licensing statements.
>
> In other words, I find it ok - and most sensible - to abbreviate to...
>
>  * Merge all Files sections for same codebase and same licensing
>  * Merge all copyright holder lines into one
>  * Strip &copy; and other copyright signatures
>  * List copyright years most compact as possible
>    * Use full 4-digit years: 1999 (not '99)
>    * Use ranges: 1999-2003 (not 1999,2000,2001,2002,2003)
>    * Strip spaces in between years chunk: 2001,2002 (not 2001, 2002)
>
> Also, I prefer to add a comma between years chunk and name of copyright
> holder.
>
> So I would list above example as such:
>
>  Copyright: 1997-2010, Kai Vehmanen
>
> I would not trust license-check but check the actual files for e.g.
> additional years listed on another line, or licensing variation/excemption.
>
> I would also grep sources for some mention of email address for the authors
> when not included at the place of claiming the copyright.  Again this is
> tied to my understanding of the Copyright paragraph reflecting not "what was
> stated as copyright" but "who (and for what years) was stated as being
> copyright holder".
>
>
> Hope that helps.

Thank you very much Jonas, that was indeed helpful :)

Cheers