Bug#1111126: Policy change and technical adjustments

Alex <[email protected]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:02 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.policy
Message-ID	<87bjefnhgd.fsf__43395.2480250568$1778969370$gmane$org@t400deb>

Hi everyone

I'm not sure whether one has to interpret the current Policy section 2.3
as requiring to include copyright information _about copyright
information_ itself (or for those files to be DFSG-compliant for that
matter.)

If that is not the case, then what Sean proposes

> So I think the answer to how such license text files should be
> documented is that they shouldn't be.

is the right way to proceed, IMHO. In the FOSS world, this is not
without precedent, as e.g. the Free Software Foundation Europe backed
[REUSE spec is very clear about license files themselves not being
covered by the spec][1].

[1]: https://reuse.software/spec-3.3/#covered-and-ignored-files

However, there are other files in addition to licenses themselves, which
do not need copyright information, IMHO: e.g., REUSE.toml or .license
files as described by the REUSE spec. I.e., files whose sole purpose is
the conveyance of licensing/copyright information.

If there is consensus on **not** requiring copyright information for all
files which are included in the source/binary package which supply
exactly this type of information, the question becomes how to deal with
Lintian recognizing what those files are exactly. Maybe have a fourth
stanza type in d/copyright which is a list of patterns/paths identifying
files license/copyright information rather than trying to make this
information fit the existing File stanza?

@Guillem: Which tools have a hard requirement on d/copyright covering
*all* files in the package?

Best,
-- 
Alex
# No gods, no masters.
# 47A5 9C45 FA69 E651 25ED 0B98 9891 FC5D 3C3C 4426

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