Re: Missing copyright clause of debian directory

Xiyue,

On Tuesday, July 2, 2024 2:31:47 PM MST Xiyue Deng wrote:
> Actually I think this was the case for web-mode given Thomas' response
> in [1].  Also, when I asked in #debian-mentors, more people share the
> same view and they also choose not to add a separate license clause for
> "File: debian/*" as a result.  I think that suggests that omitting it
> may be a common practice, and if that is common enough, it could be
> considered intentional.

Having read Thomas’ response in the bug report, I can tell you that his 
opinions about copyright (that is it not important, and that Debian shouldn’t 
be so worried about it) does not reflect the general consensus in the Debian 
community.

I don’t have a conclusive answer as to how many packages do not have an 
explicit debian/* entry in their copyright file, but my personal experience is 
that it is not common.  I can’t think of a single package, besides this one, 
that does not have it.  Also, I can’t imagine you would find anyone on Mentors 
who would be willing to sponsor a package without an explicit debian/* 
copyright entry.

Despite whatever might be argued to the contrary as to how copyrightable the 
contents of debian/* are, the consensus of the Debian community is that they 
are copyrightable and that the copyright and licensing information should be 
explicitly stated.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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