Bug#1111126: Policy change and technical adjustments

Hello Russ,
thank for your comment.

Am 18.05.2026 02:55 schrieb Russ Allbery:
> debian/copyright is intended to be a primarily *human-readable*

Thank you for pointing me to this. I did not realized it nor give much 
thoughts
on that. I recognized at primarily machine-readble format with the 
side-benefit
of being also human readable.

For someone like me, none-DM and Debian-outsider, reading a d/copyright 
file
gives the idea that it is intended to me accurate (kind of perfect) in 
its details.

> Putting all of this detailed information in
> debian/copyright in the way that's been described on this thread runs 
> the
> high risk of making the file unusable for its intended purpose.

I can imagine that. If a laywer needs specific and accurate information 
about
licenses and copyright/authorship in such a project, the reuse-tool 
itself can be
used. No need to use or rely on a d/copyright file.

> turning it into a detailed license attribution database in a 
> complicated,
> verbose, and redundant format that's annoying for humans to understand.

Agreed.

> The main purpose of the debian/copyright file is to communicate to 
> *other
> humans*

I checked the Debian Policy (sections 4.5, 12.5 and 2.3). It be because 
of my
non-native English but I couldn't find a clear statement about the 
purpose
of that file.

But I remembered that the file format is often refered to as being
"machine-readable". I think this misdirects me about its purpose.

> However, I do object to overloading debian/copyright with individual
> listings of every file or separate stanzas for every copyright holder.

I wonder how to solve this in project like Back In Time. Currently the
d/copyright file is buggy and somehow illegal. Don't ask me about the
"responsible" DM. ;)

The project is 17 years hold and has over the thumb 50-100 different
copyright statements (authors). Even if pack them together in a * 
stanza,
would somehow blow-up the d/copyright file.

The question is if copyright/author info should be state in that file? 
Or
might it be enough to name only the current maintainer (group) and
point to the fact that the package consist of several parts and dozen of
authors and where to find this detailed information?

I simply don't know.

It would help me, as author of spdx2debian, a lot if Debian could give 
me a
clear statement about how to handle copyright/author information, 
including
the dos and donts. I might be able to implement that desired behavior in
the tool.

I'll think about it try to improve spdx2debian. For me it is also a 
learning
process about the needs of the Debian project and the purposes and use 
cases
of that d/copyright file.

Regards,
Christian