[SCM] libav/experimental: Rewrite copyright file using copyright format 1.0. Closes: bug#694657. Thanks to Francesco Poli.

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 11:13 PM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> Quoting Reinhard Tartler (2013-02-26 19:57:04)
>> I'm currently revisiting the generation of debian/copyright, and have
>> stumbled upon a few things that I don't understand in
>> debian/copyright.
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 8:47 PM,  <js at users.alioth.debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> > +License: LGPL-2.1+~Libav
>>
>> What's this? What does the ~Libav suffix mean and how did it end
>> there? Was this some tool or did you add that manually?
>
> I did that by hand.
>
> Purpose is to indicate that it is a reference to a licensing statement
> derived from another more common one.
>
> Even if the licensing _terms_ that LGPL-2.1+~Libav grants is the same as
> the more common LGPL-2.1, the licensing _statement_ is not verbatim
> identical, and in my interpretation of Debian Policy that means that it
> needs to be included - and this is the way I found best expressing it.
>
> The syntax I chose is - I believe - fully compatible with Copyright file
> format 1.0, and I intend to propose that syntax as a recommended
> extension for a future format of that file format.
>
> (...and I do expect that proposal to stir some debate about whether my
> interpretation of Debian Policy is too strict or not - but that is a
> separate issue to that of the choice of syntax, really.

TBH, this appears to be a bit picky, but I wouldn't object if there
were reliable tools that help with its maintenance. I'm asking because
that's what I am currently trying, that is, to re-instantiate the
licensecheck2dep5 workflow. Unfortunately, AFAIUI I am unable to work
it out with the given tools. See below.

>> Is the debian supposed to fall into the first, catch-all paragraph
>> (Files: *)?
>
> Well, in its most strict interpretation: yes.
>
> I have - like anyone that I know of - chosen a relaxed interpretation of
> how to express non-covered files.  What I really mean to say with the
> wildcard "Files: *" entry is that it covers all parts that are not
> covered more specifically _or_ not covered at all: I have found noone
> claiming copyright nor granting any licensing for Debian parts of this
> package.

Right, I really need to add some copyright statements to debian/rules
and debian/confflags. That work is clearly not-trivial and deserves an
explicit notice

> What I often do is to state copyright and licensing in the header of the
> debian/rules file (because that tends to be the location of most code),
> and then sloppily interprets statements in that header to cover all of
> debian/* (except debian/patches/*).

Makes sense.

What I did is to install  licensecheck2dep5 script into debian, and
copy its invocation from cdbs's utils.mk into debian/rules.
Unfortunately, I am unable to produce satisfactory results with that.
I am unsatisfied, because with this re-implementation, I get a
diffstat of this:

 copyright_newhints | 6192 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------------
 1 file changed, 3758 insertions(+), 2434 deletions(-)

That's clearly too much for me to review, so I wonder what cdbs is
doing differently than me calling licensecheck2dep5 by hand.

Jonas, maybe you could have a look and tell me what I'm doing wrong?


-- 
regards,
    Reinhard