Bug#698019: libav: the effective GPL-licensed status of the binary packages should be clearly documented

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Reinhard Tartler (2013-01-16 07:27:25)
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 1:20 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'll setup a mechanism to have libav extend the copyright file for 
> > each binary packages, adding to header section a reasoned effective 
> > license.
> >
> > ...and will start do similar for all the other packages that I am 
> > involved in, as I examine copyrights and licensing for those and 
> > convert to machine-readable format.
> 
> TBH, I think the best way to go from here is to extend the 
> specification to include extra fields that cover the effective license 
> of given binary packages, and have debhelper and similar packaging 
> tools install appropriate package.copyright files from that.

Debhelper already supports debian/<package>.copyright files.

Copyright file format 1.0 already supports expressing effective license 
(by use of the header section Copyright field).

The "mechanism" I had in mind was to generate debian/<package>.copyright 
files during build, based on debian/copyright and 
debian/<package>.copyright.in files or some such,

It would be good to have a _future_ copyright file format version more 
clearly document the use(s) of the header section Copyright field.  I 
find it best, however, to postpone discussing further deveopment of that 
file format until after the release of Wheezy.

Maybe it would be good to have improved standardized mechanisms to 
expand/compute/whatever copyright files for binary pakages, but I 
personally have little imagination what that might be, as I have only 
now had the epiphany of how those makes sense, and have zero experience 
in composing them as of yet.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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