Package: debian-policy Version: 4.2.1.4 Tags: patch On Tue 30 Oct 2018 at 09:34PM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> 2. Additionally, it is currently required by policy: > > 2.3 Copyright considerations > > Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright > information and distribution license in the file > /usr/share/doc/package/copyright ... > > [...] > > 4. The FTP team believes that documenting copyright holders in > debian/copyright is a good idea. If policy were modified to make it along the > lines of SHALL if the license does not explicitly allow it to be left out of > binary distributions and SHOULD in all other cases, the FTP team believes this > would be a good change make maintainer's efforts easier when a package license > allows for it. I suspect we have wider project consensus for this minimal change, even if others would prefer to relax the requirement further, so I'm optimistically going ahead and seeking seconds for the following patch (word diff was unfortunately not much better to read): diff --git a/policy/ch-archive.rst b/policy/ch-archive.rst index c429f71..72764a9 100644 --- a/policy/ch-archive.rst +++ b/policy/ch-archive.rst @@ -183,10 +183,18 @@ In addition, the packages in *non-free* Copyright considerations ------------------------ +Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its +distribution license in the file ``/usr/share/doc/package/copyright``. + Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright -information and distribution license in the file -``/usr/share/doc/package/copyright`` (see -:ref:`s-copyrightfile` for further details). +information, unless its distribution license explicitly permits this +information to be excluded from distributions of binaries built from +the source. In such cases, a verbatim copy of its copyright +information should normally still be included, but need not be if +creating and maintaining a copy of that information involves +significant time and effort. + +See :ref:`s-copyrightfile` for further details. We reserve the right to restrict files from being included anywhere in our archives if diff --git a/policy/ch-source.rst b/policy/ch-source.rst index 7c6c4e8..dc80243 100644 --- a/policy/ch-source.rst +++ b/policy/ch-source.rst @@ -210,12 +210,13 @@ packages, please see :ref:`s-changelogs`. Copyright: ``debian/copyright`` ------------------------------- -Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright -information and distribution license in the file -``/usr/share/doc/package/copyright`` (see -:ref:`s-copyrightfile` for further details). Also see -:ref:`s-pkgcopyright` for further considerations related -to copyrights for packages. +Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its +distribution license in the file ``/usr/share/doc/package/copyright``. + +This file is usually required to contain a verbatim copy of the +package's copyright information, too; see :ref:`s-copyrightfile` and +:ref:`s-pkgcopyright` for details, and for further considerations +related to copyrights for packages. .. _s4.6: -- Sean Whitton
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