[Pkg-opt-media-team] Direct contact to ask for Debian sponsorship of libburn, libisofs, libisoburn

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Dominique Dumont wrote:
> Let's start with libiso.

Thanks for taking care.

I followed your instructions about cme and uploaded a new
libisofs candidate:
  http://mentors.debian.net/package/libisofs  2015-08-31 11:44 
Also in SVN
  http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-libburnia?view=revision&revision=315


Important questions:

Do you want to be sponsor ?

Shall i file RFS bugs and ask for others ?
I planned to wait one week for answers from direct contact
and to then post RFS bugs. This timeout would be today evening.

Must i strive for a maintainer upload ?
Last time i added myself to Uploaders i got several
lintian warnings of which the fix attempts led me
into the swamp. I got the impression to need a sponsor
before this has hope for success. NMU seems better for
my current zero Debian rank and level of understanding.


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Less important issues:

Personally i would prefer to condense the copyrights
of all upstream files into one section with all the holders
including those which were forgotten in the old copyright file.

But for now i take the result from cme and just change all licenses
except debian/* to GPL-2+.


cme adventure summary:

Intermediately i got quite lost with what cme does to my files
and how it later comments its own work.
The missing keyword to search for in
  https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#license-field
turned out to be

  "stand-alone License paragraphs"

Instead "cme check dpkg" talks of

  Warning in 'copyright License:GPL text' value 'Please fill license GPL from header of demo/*': License contains copyright scanner boilerplate. Please update this field with the actual license text

If i cluelessly delete the cme-generated boilerplate:

  Warning: skipping value GPL-2+ because of the following errors:
  license 'GPL-2+' is not declared in main License section. Expected 

The message really ends after "Expected".

Writing two standalone license sections for GPL-2+ and GPL-2
silenced the protest. (I changed "GPL" to GPL-2+ and GPL-2 as
appropriate to my upstream knowledge.)

Subsequent cme fix dpkg changed file debian/control and touched
debian/rules and debian/compat without changing them.

Now cme check dpkg issues no recognizable complaints any more.

But lintian is unhappy with what cme made me do with
standalone license sections:

  W: libisofs source: dep5-copyright-license-name-not-unique (paragraph at line 109)
  W: libisofs source: dep5-copyright-license-name-not-unique (paragraph at line 113)
  W: libisofs source: missing-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright gpl-2+ (paragraph at line 104)

Reading doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0, i
developed the theory that lintian is satisfied with

  Files:
  Copyright:
  License: name
    Explanantion

and hates duplicate explanations, whereas cme wants to see

  Files:
  Copyright:
  License: name
    [tolerates but does not need explanation here]

  License: name
    Explanantion

At least i could silence both by this compromise:

  License: name
    Explanantion

  Files: 
  Copyright:
  License: name
    [no explanantion]

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> - debian/copyright is incomplete, Some © holders mentioned in files are 
> forgotten. You should use "cme update dpkg-copyright"

Ouch. The result is not what it is supposed to be.

Besides the very finely granulated copyright holder history,
all automatically detected license info says "GPL" rather
than "GPL-2+".

What does this statement at the end of the copyright file
mean:

  License: GPL
   Please fill license GPL from header of demo/*


> cme check dpkg

This complains about above riddling final section in copyright

  Warning in 'copyright License:GPL text' value 'Please fill license GPL from header of demo/*': License contains copyright scanner boilerplate. Please update this field with the actual license text

The directory libisofs-1.4.0/demo contains one file

  demo.c

No headers to see. Is this a bug ?

I remove the lines from copyright and on re-run of
cme check dpkg i get flooded with

  Warning: skipping value GPL because of the following errors:
license 'GPL' is not declared in main License section. Expected 

Well, it was not me who wrote "GPL".
The source tarball is GPL version 2 or later. If any of the source
files says something contradicting then it is a bug.

Copyright statements are supposed to look like the one in libisofs.h

 * This file is part of the libisofs project; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2
 * or later as published by the Free Software Foundation.

but cme rather states

  Files: libisofs/libisofs.h
  Copyright: 2009-2015, Thomas Schmitt
    2007, 2008, Vreixo Formoso, Mario Danic
  License: GPL

I looked into several of the files, and all say this (or a more
liberal license).

Why does it not recognize me in libisofs/ecma119_tree.h ?

   * Copyright (c) 2007 Vreixo Formoso
   *               2012 - 2014 Thomas Schmitt

but rather states only

  Copyright: 2007, 2008, Vreixo Formoso

This still yields

  Warning: skipping value GPL-2+ because of the following errors:
  license 'GPL-2+' is not declared in main License section. Expected 

and

  Configuration item 'copyright Files:"demo/*" License short_name' has a wrong value:
        Undefined mandatory value.

https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
says
  "Header paragraph (once) ... License: optional."
I add a "License" header to the first section. No change in cme
output.

While clicking around in Debian docs, i found
https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#stand-alone-license-paragraph
which inspired me to write to the copyright file end:

  License: GPL-2+
   On Debian systems the full text of the GNU General Public License can
   be found in the /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 file.

  License: GPL
   On Debian systems the full text of the GNU General Public License can
   be found in the /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 file.

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Have a nice day :)

Thomas