[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#334870: More info needed

[Andreas Jellinghaus]

Am Mittwoch 26 Oktober 2005 08:51 schrieb Christian Perrier:
> I'm afraid I'm missing the point in your bug report.

it is quite simple: you are violating the GPL.
it clearly states:
"appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice"

copyright notice is that line with the "(C)". take a look at the
source, you will find it (idealy) in every single file. there is
a name in that line. that person is the author/copyright
holder. you need to copy&paste that line to the copyright file.

you need three parts in the copyright file:
 - copyright notice - you failed to provide that one.
 - disclaimer of warranties - not needed per se, but the GPL requires you 
   to include it ("publish on each copy ... and disclaimer of warranty").
 - license

only the last part can be replaced by linking to the license as you did.
you missed the first two parts and thus violated GPL.

for goods sake: they wrote the code. the least you can do is make sure
the documentation has their names in it. that is the basic human respect
for other peoples work.

> ...which is common practice for all GPL licensed Debian packages so
> that copyright files do not reproduce the GPL everywhere and, worse,
> do not keep outdated versions of the GPL license text.

so please duplicate this bug for every single one of them. you can link
to the license, but you MUST reproduce the copyright notice and
the disclaimer of warranties, if you don't you violate the GPL. 

> In the above file, everything you request is mentioned.

no, it does not have the copyright notice, and the disclaimer of
warranties is not something optional you can link to /refer to.
it must be published in every copy. every copy. not only that
package with the GPL license, but every copy, and that includes
every package with GPL software. 

hey, it is only four lines:
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

and you can remove the first half of the first sentence and the last sentence
but the rest needs to stay, or you are violating the GPL.

> So, I actually really wonder what you want us to do. If this is
> "please include the full text of the GPL in
> /usr/share/odc/login/copyright", then the answer is *no*.

copy all lines with "(C)" in them (remove duplicates) and copy the disclaimer
of warranties. take a look at the GPL file, they have an example of what to 
do:


...

  To do so, attach the following notices to the program.  It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

    <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
    Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301 USA


so if you copy the descriptions and "(C)" lines and then once the second
and third paragraph (make sure they are all the same, some people
remove the "or any later" part, for example the linux kernel!). the last
paragraph can be replaced by pointing to the /usr/share/common-licensed/GPL
file. the first three need to stay, and the program name and copyright holder
name and year etc. form the copyright notice, so the GPL requires you to
reproduce them in the binary package, too.

Regards, Andreas