> Debian distributes _binaries_ and that's what your packages ship, binary > files with documentation. The documentation file debian/copyright is > mandatory for all packages and its contents are too. It is a way to determine > what > > a) the license of a package is > b) who is/are the upstream author/s > c) who holds copyright for the source
But have you evere checked the distrubtions of avifile - i.e. the /usr/share/doc/avifile-utils directory ? There are files which contain this information (CREDITS COPYING LICENCING and so on Is your whole point about the fact that the content of this files is not merged into debian's copyright file ?? > > (as this happened many times in ffmpeg - I'm also sometimes > > doing on this project) > > If you don't do this then avifile will probably be removed from Debian. wow :) > > I guess this would be really nice topic for debian list - yet I'm not > > able to spend that much time with some crazy flames about this. > > There wouldn't be any flames, policy is clear on this. As far as I know the package is distributed with all necessary information about major project developers copyright except that that there is not every single copyright name as many author tends to fix one minor bug which makes them believe, that their name should be written into the stone to be remembered by the next 10 generation... > > it for free - but I'm not supposed to spend my whole life on this. > Maintainers are _supposed_ to review the changes in sources when they package > new upstream versions if only to confirm that there is nothing in them > "strange" (like a new copyright which is different from before and is > not-free, a trojan horse or whatever) I would be realistic.... As I said - all the libs used by avifile are either GPL or LGPL - there is no chance they could be incompatible with Debian.... > A Debian developer will look for the debian/copyright file, like I did, Ohh that means you ignore the rest of the files ? > If I somebody does it you will probably get a bug report. In any case, > missing one name is not as important as not having _any_ name! As I said - if the whole thing we are talking about is that I should join the other files distributed with packege into copyright file sure it's not a problem... > Mention one that is missing from Debian because of this issue. If you > don't want to adhere to Debian standards then leave the project and orphan > your packages. ffmpeg, mplayer to name few... kabi
