Am 10.11.22 um 21:38 schrieb Santiago Vila:
For example, your proposed copyright file has this:
Files: *Makefile.in
I guess this means "anything including the 'Makefile.in' string, which includes a file called Makefile.in at any
directory depth but also something called this-is-not-really-a-Makefile.in-file".
The documentation about this I'm reading:
https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
suggests */Makefile.in. Am I right to think that this includes the Makefile.in
file in the root directory of the package?
Yes, you could have a this-is-not-really-a-Makefile.in that also matches, but
there is none.
Sure you can match */... to get around that.
Also: What would be the easiest way to put debian/* files in public-domain?
Docs say that when I use "public-domain" string I have to explain exactly "what exemption the corresponding files for
that paragraph have from default copyright restrictions". What would be an example of this?
If you are the only copyright holder for debian/* you can easily do that. There is not really a standard way to put a
file in the public domain and there seems to be no such thing in some jurisdictions. A plain English sentence expressing
that should be enough. A good way to do it in my opinion is to use a public domain statement with some fallback license
like Unlicense or CC0. CC0 is available in Debian's common-licenses, so you just need to reference that file instead of
carrying the whole text in your copyright file.
The reason that the standard has this explanation requirement is that many people mistake being freely licensed or "has
no copyright statement" for "public domain" and will put "public domain" on things that were never released into the
public domain.
