Christian Surchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I have a package (tkpgp) from munitions.vipul.net archive and the > upstream maintainer wants distribute only his email and his > nick. The program is GPL. Can this package stay in Debian, without > real name of author in debian/copyright?
An interesting question. Personally I'd doubt it: what sort of guarantees do we have that the anonymous guy who claims copyright really has copyright? A concrete scenario: by the time J. Random CD Manufacturer has pressed 100.000 sets of Potato disks, somebody stands forward and asserts the copyright to the package, demanding that he be paid a humongous license fee or the disks are destroyed. Now, who can JRCM sue for making the false claim that the program was GPL? If the identity of the upstream maintainer who claimed GPL was known, things would be relatively easy - the culprit can be held responsible, and even if he's nowhere to find Debian has acted in good faith and made any reasonable effort to identify the sources of the rumors we act upon. However, if Debian started accepting code based on anonymous hearsay that whoever wrote this means it to be under GPL, and a scenario like the above came true, Debian's general reputation would go way down. However, it is another question if the anonymous maintainer simply maintains code that some earlier author or maintainer (who was a real, identifyable person) put under the GPL. -- Henning Makholm "Jeg mener, at der eksisterer et hemmeligt selskab med forgreninger i hele verden, som arbejder i det skjulte for at udsprede det rygte at der eksisterer en verdensomspændende sammensværgelse."