Re: Please review new license summaries for Debian

Quoting Andrey Rakhmatullin (2026-06-15 15:48:56)
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2026 at 01:44:48PM +0000, [email protected] wrote:
> >>as recently was mentioned on #-dfsg, there's a not yet standardized
> >>'Reference: /usr/share/common-licenses/[...]' field people are using,
> >>and just switched to, too, e.g.:
> >>
> >>https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/g/gapless/copyright-4.6.1-1
> >>
> >>how about moving from license 'summaries' to 'references' instead?
> >
> >I was not able to find a "Reference" field/stanze in the d/copyright 
> >standard.
> >Is your linked copyright file valid?
> 
> They said it's "a not yet standardized field".

Right. the machine-readable copyright format explicitly permits
extending with not yet standardized fields, and Reference is such
extension.

It is discussed a bit at bug#786450.

It is also not standardized to "invent" a license grant. What I mean by
that is that there is a big difference between upstream saying "this
project is licensed under GPL-2 or later" and a Debian package
maintainer inventing(!) a statement like "On Debian systems, the full
text is available at ...".

What is standardized in the machine-readable license format is how to
cite what upstream copyright holder stated. Package maintainers can
grant licensing only for what they (arguably) hold copyright for
themselves, i.e. most often only the debian/* part of the Package.

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
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