Control: reopen -1
On Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:43:45 +0200 Jonas Smedegaard <jo...@jones.dk> wrote:
Control: tag -1 wontfix
Hi Bastian,
Quoting Bastian Germann (2025-04-08 09:36:22)
> The BSD-3-clause stanza in debian/copyright refers to
> /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD, which has a slightly different than the
> actual helix-view/tests/encoding/LICENSE-WHATWG. Please copy the license
> text.
There is an essential word missing in your text above, about what it is
you report as being slightly different. I assume you mean either "line
wrapping" or "wording".
Wording. I do not care about line wrapping.
I agree that the two files are not identical, but I disagree that
varying whitespace and the few different words is an issue for Debian:
The legal terms are identical except if treating
/usr/share/common-licenses/BSD as specifically and only ever covering
"The Regents of the University of California" which is not how I treat
that text; an approach that I believe is shared with lawyers involved
with SPDX and that I also believe is not in conflict with Debian common
practice.
The point of SPDX is that they have a framework where they have specified text
substitutions.
There is nothing comparable in Debian's copyright file approach.
If you meant something else, then please do clarify.
If I understood you correctly and you insist that there is an important
issue to fix here, then please elaborate, so that we can share our
different viewpoints with other legally interested people in Debian.
Actually, this is a serious issue. But I know that some people disagree.
That is why I have filed it as important. However, I do not think that
FTP Masters disagree with my take. I have seen packages being rejected
from NEW because they did not have the correct BSD-3-clause variant with
the 3rd clause and the legal disclaimer matching the actual source.
Also, the Policy ยง12 footnote [9] suggests otherwise:
"The University of California BSD license is also included in base-files as /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD, but given
the brevity of this license, its specificity to code whose copyright is held by the Regents of the University of
California, and the frequency of minor wording changes, its text should be included in the copyright file rather than
referencing this file."
[9]: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#id19
Cheers,
Bastian
