Bug#451647: debian/copyright and actual copyrights
On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 07:01:05AM +, Jeff Licquia wrote: severity 451647 serious thanks Yaroslav Halchenko wrote: Today I've filed a bugreport http://bugs.debian.org/451647 against wacom-tools package. Its copyright file imho violates the policy (I think I can cite it here since it is quite concise) ,--- | This package was created by Ron Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] on | Thu, 4 Nov 2004 16:06:55 -0800. | | Parts of it were downloaded from http://linuxwacom.sf.net | | Copyright: GPL | | Some files in the linuxwacom distribution are now covered by the LGPL, | the individual files are marked accordingly. | | A copy of the GPL and LGPL can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses | on Debian systems. `--- This is rude at the very least; by implication, the only person worth mentioning who's contributed anything to this package is Ron Lee. If what I hear about moral rights outside the USA is true, it may even rise to the level of illegality to incorrectly infer such a prominent status for oneself and such a minor place for others. You are mixing things that aren't on the same level. The _packaging_ has been created by Ron Lee indeed, meaning that what is under debian/ is his. Nowhere it claims he wrote any of the package upstream. If you believe you read something like that, read again. And again, because you're wrong. OTOH this debian/copyright is clearly deficient in many ways, but stop accusing him of bad faith, you're just out of your mind. -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O[EMAIL PROTECTED] OOOhttp://www.madism.org pgpxmFZQkREfA.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#451647: debian/copyright and actual copyrights
On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 09:28:28AM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote: OTOH this debian/copyright is clearly deficient in many ways, but stop accusing him of bad faith, you're just out of your mind. Thanks Pierre, you've just saved us all from my response to jeff's wild slander from the hip. There are two issues here, the important one being -policy compliance, the other stylistic. Since the bug was raised to red-alert-panic severity without pointing to a single clear policy violation, I'll ask again for the sake of our new audience, before I summarily close it by way of reply: Can someone show me any single MUST in policy that is violated by this debian/copyright file? Bonus points if you can get them all first time. Because by my reading, there apparently aren't any. I don't extrapolate from that to say this is a masterpiece of best practice, because its actually clearly one of the most appalling copyright files I've ever seen. Kid's don't clone this at home. I mean it. This is the kind of boilerplate abuse your parents and friends warned you about. (even if it is better than some of the ones Ganneff has to sort through -- that's nothing to brag about) I can make my excuses for that separately[1], but our law here is -policy, and if I, the boilerplate maker, ftp-admin, and any number of other developers have not spotted a violation of it in all the many years this has looked the way it does -- then we have a quite different serious bug on our hands we should know more about. I don't think that is the case though, I do agree this file needs the same sort of treatment the Smith inquisition recently gave the rest of the package text, and that will be done, but its probably not a job for -legal, and clearly not 'serious' in the BTS sense. Cheers, Ron [1] - Ok then, you asked for it: This package started out (intended) as an uncertain mash-up of various tablet related things from various sources. Right now it really is mostly just the linuxwacom driver, and I'm mostly hacking on it vicariously at present since the kernel driver is sound, and other folks are the XOrg experts where the trouble is. The copyright file apparently hasn't been polished since then and just contains the minimum required to cover the things that were going in there (and some fairly stupid typos). It makes sense to buff it up a bit now that things have a fairly stable form established. All the original attributions and licences are kept with the relevant source, this is just the cover page in the binary, and since it clearly has almost no additional information than the minimum required of it, I'd expect any wise user would not try to infer any such things from that nothingness and quickly look elsewhere for them instead. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#451647: debian/copyright and actual copyrights
On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 05:39:06PM +, Ron wrote: On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 09:28:28AM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote: OTOH this debian/copyright is clearly deficient in many ways, but stop accusing him of bad faith, you're just out of your mind. Thanks Pierre, you've just saved us all from my response to jeff's wild slander from the hip. There are two issues here, the important one being -policy compliance, the other stylistic. Since the bug was raised to red-alert-panic severity without pointing to a single clear policy violation, I'll ask again for the sake of our new audience, before I summarily close it by way of reply: Can someone show me any single MUST in policy that is violated by this debian/copyright file? Bonus points if you can get them all first time. yes it's a must. see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/12/msg7.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/12/msg00194.html You have to list every copyright holder and copyright statements for any files. It's painful, but it's the rules. Though feel free to discuss the why and how on -devel@ :) -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O[EMAIL PROTECTED] OOOhttp://www.madism.org pgpz8D6hRH1XM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#451647: debian/copyright and actual copyrights
On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 04:09:06AM +1030, Ron wrote: On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 09:28:28AM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote: OTOH this debian/copyright is clearly deficient in many ways, but stop accusing him of bad faith, you're just out of your mind. Thanks Pierre, you've just saved us all from my response to jeff's wild slander from the hip. There are two issues here, the important one being -policy compliance, the other stylistic. Since the bug was raised to red-alert-panic severity without pointing to a single clear policy violation, I'll ask again for the sake of our new audience, before I summarily close it by way of reply: Can someone show me any single MUST in policy that is violated by this debian/copyright file? Bonus points if you can get them all first time. 4.5. Copyright: `debian/copyright' -- Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright and distribution license in the file `/usr/share/doc/package/copyright' (see Section 12.5, `Copyright information' for further details). Also see Section 2.3, `Copyright considerations' for further considerations relayed to copyrights for packages. Copyright: GPL is wrong. GPL is the license; the debian/copyright file needs to list the copyright, which is a statement of the copyright *holder* and the year it was written. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#451647: debian/copyright and actual copyrights
On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 10:38:14AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Copyright: GPL is wrong. GPL is the license; Yeah, I already pled no-contest to that brain fart. the debian/copyright file needs to list the copyright, which is a statement of the copyright *holder* and the year it was written. Looks like linuxwacom upstream itself doesn't have a COPYING file as such, but the source files all have the standard GNU This program is ... boilerplate which we can quote. This package is fubar serious broken anyhow until upstream fixes the xserver prang, but I'll tidy this up the for the next upload. Cheers, Ron -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#451647: debian/copyright and actual copyrights
severity 451647 serious thanks Yaroslav Halchenko wrote: Today I've filed a bugreport http://bugs.debian.org/451647 against wacom-tools package. Its copyright file imho violates the policy (I think I can cite it here since it is quite concise) ,--- | This package was created by Ron Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] on | Thu, 4 Nov 2004 16:06:55 -0800. | | Parts of it were downloaded from http://linuxwacom.sf.net | | Copyright: GPL | | Some files in the linuxwacom distribution are now covered by the LGPL, | the individual files are marked accordingly. | | A copy of the GPL and LGPL can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses | on Debian systems. `--- The only named person in the copyright file is Ron Lee, and the only upstream acknowledgment is that *some* of the code was downloaded from someplace on SourceForge. By contrast, the package source (and upstream source) contains an AUTHORS file which gives credit to a number of named persons, one of whom is named the current maintainer, and none of whom are Ron Lee. This is rude at the very least; by implication, the only person worth mentioning who's contributed anything to this package is Ron Lee. If what I hear about moral rights outside the USA is true, it may even rise to the level of illegality to incorrectly infer such a prominent status for oneself and such a minor place for others. Indeed, he is scrupulous when adding his own name to files he has modified; see linuxwacom/src/2.6.10/wacom.c. But beyond this file, and a few build system files (Makefile.am, configure.in, and the like), all of Ron Lee's contributions to this package are contained in the debian directory of the package, as far as I can tell. Compare this to Ping Cheng, who is mentioned as the current (upstream) maintainer, and whose name appears on all but four of the 70-odd commits to the ChangeLog file in upstream CVS, as well as on a great number of the source files. If anyone's name deserves to be in the copyright file, it would seem to be his. I am not sure why the clear statement in the AUTHORS file cannot be reproduced in the copyright file; it would seem, at the very least, to be as complete as upstream itself deems necessary. And I have not even started on some of the other errors: the half-acknowledged error that Copyright should refer to the owners of the code, and License to the license granted by the owners; the fact that the GPL requires an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty, which is missing from the file; the fact that no identification was done of the parts of the code not downloaded from SourceForge, or the ownership or licenses of those parts; the misrepresentation of the license as GPL (without version) when the version is very clearly identified; etc. And I am troubled by the push-back. If this were a bug report on my package, even if I felt I had honored the copyright owners enough, I would probably just make the changes and be done with it. Why is this controversial? What is wrong with the idea of being more clear about the copyright? What harm does it do to expand on the file? Certainly Ron Lee has put more work into defending the incompleteness of his copyright statement than it would have taken to fix it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
