Noah Slater <nsla...@tumbolia.org> writes: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 07:27:33PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote: >> > Does Files: *.c mean that everything below applies equally to all >> > files that match the pattern or does it mean that the statement >> > includes a summary of all files that match the pattern? >> >> Before this thread, I was under the unquestioning assumption that the >> former interpretation was the only one. The question has never, to my >> knowledge, been raised explicitly like this before. I'd like to know >> what the consensus of the Debian project is on the question. > > Likewise, I had never thought of this use before, but now it has been > explained > I don't think I have a problem with it. My expectation for the Copyright field > has been widened significantly following recent discussion, to the point > where I > no longer consider it necessary at all. Given this position, it is not hard > for > me to appreciate that you might want to collapse any copyright statements down > into one File stanza for convenience.
I would say that the former interpretation applies. Files: *.c means that all files that mach the pattern are covered in this section of the copyright file. And I believe everyone agrees that a following License: GPL2+ then applies to all of those files. The question is to me what a Copyright: stanza really means. A copyright statement in a source file does not imply that every person mentioned has a copyright on every line of the file. It means that every person has a copyright on some portion of the file (that the program authors have deemed siginficant enough to mention the person at all). And I think it is perfectly fine to expand that principle to debian/copyright and say that each person mentioned in the Copyright: stanzas has a copyright to some portion of the files specified in Files: - and not necessarily every file. Matthias -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
