[maemo-developers] docs and optification

[From: Thomas Perl]

2009/12/13 Attila Csipa <maemo at csipa.in.rs>:
> On Sunday 13 December 2009 15:13:54 Mustali Dalal wrote:
>> Purging copyright files does not seem right; they are tiny and have legal
>> bearing.
>>
>> Since a lot, if not all, apps currently in testing use GPL or other FOSS
>> license, I would guess there be good reasons to keep the copyright file
>> installed with the package. Would there be license violation if a copyright
>> file is not installed with the package?
>>
>> or is this a non-issue for developers?
>
> I'm wondering maybe we could have a license package we could depend on and
> then just use a softlink or something similar ? A Depends: license-gpl (>=3.0)
> sounds simple enough to me and then the license is crystal clear and we don't
> have to duplicate the license for each package and the license package can
> provide all the legalese. It would also simplify checking/verifying proper
> licensing in the autobuilder. Just a thought.

License != Names of copyright holders. Also, some packages include
files with different licenses, and the debian/copyright should contain
information about them. For different files, there might be different
copyright holders and parts of the code could come from different
sources. The debian/copyright file can sum up all these facts. For
example, have a look at the copyright file for mplayer in Debian:

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/mplayer/mplayer_1.0~rc3+svn20090405-1/mplayer.copyright

Thomas