Simon McVittie writes ("Re: Has Copyright summarizing outlived its
usefulness?"):
> I've written about this before, for example in
> <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/08/msg00181.html>, and I'd be
> very glad to see an "official" response from the ftp team.
>From what I've seen of the ftp review process, the file-by-file
information is invaluable to ftpmaster review. As in, the ftpmaster
review would probably be impractical without it. ftpmaster review
necessarily focuses on the contents of the source package.
That the information for ftpmaster review has ended up being shipped
as the user-facing copyright notice in the binary is arguably not
ideal for some of the reasons we have explored here.
But producing a correct overall licence statement for each package is
nontrivial additional work - we have disussed this in the past - and
there isn't the appetite for that. And of course the per-contributor
notices information is sometimes required, and the per-file
information normally contains it.
So we go with what we have, and what we already have a mechanism for
auditing.
Ian.
