On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 6:28 PM, Thomas Goirand wrote: > All I'm saying, is that copyright holder information / author list is > mandatory if the license mandates it. The case of an anonymous author > shows we've accepted software in Debian without a copyright holder.
Software with an anonymous author still has a copyright holder, who might be anonymous or not. Software that has been released into the public domain is the only thing that can show we've accepted software in Debian without a copyright holder (and we definitely have accepted that). > I still don't understand why. I understand why it's a re-assurance that > the shipped license is correct, but I don't see why otherwise. The copyright holder is the the person who grants Debian/etc a license to do things, the license grant is the connection between the copyright holder and their intention to allow actions that are normally blocked by copyright law. There is no license without either the copyright holder relinquishing their copyright and placing the software into the public domain (where possible), or the copyright holder explicitly granting a license. Without knowledge of as much of the whole chain from author to copyright holder to license grant (or public domain dedication) to license as possible I wonder if we can confidently call anything Free Software, at least until copyright law is repealed. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise