On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 01:26:29PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Julian Gilbey <jul...@d-and-j.net> writes: > > > Just a straw poll: who sees /etc/motd these days? My system (probably > > in common with many many users) boots into a graphical environment; I > > only see the motd in the case that I ssh into my machine. So I'm > > against removing the 'see /u/s/common-licenses' type wording in the > > copyright file, unless the copyright file is no longer intended for > > humans to be able to read and understand. > > Well, how many people ever look at /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright, > though? I think it's reasonable to believe that if someone gets that far, > they've either seen /etc/motd or know enough about Debian to know where to > look for things. > > (I see it all the time, but I run Debian on servers.)
Well, /usr/share/doc is a standard FHS location, /usr/share/common-licenses isn't, so I would think to look in /usr/share/doc for information about a package (and the first time I look there, I discover that Debian organises it by package). But I wouldn't think to look in /etc/motd to find out where license texts are stored - that's somewhat bizarre. I might look at the URL given at the top of the copyright file if I were really bothered to find out more about the format, but it still doesn't seem particularly arduous to continue to include the standard license conditions in the copyright file and a reference to /u/s/common-licenses: these files are generally created once and then updated only as necessary. Best wishes, Julian