Ben Finney <bign...@debian.org> writes: > The files in ‘/usr/share/common-licenses/’ get installed on every Debian > system, by the ‘base-files’ package. This is needed because that allows > ‘/usr/share/doc/…/copyright’ to refer to a file there, knowing it will > be available. > > If I understand correctly, the justification of putting a file there > must include that it is overwhelmingly more likely to save *storage > space* overall (by reducing the space in a corresponding number of > ‘/usr/share/doc/…/copyright’ files), especially on machines that have > low disk space in ‘/usr/share/’. > > So I think we should specifically ask the position of people who have > expertise maintaining machines with very small disk space: How to judge > which files should be unilaterally installed in that directory, in the > hope of saving not only the efforts of package maintainers, but also the > storage requirements on storage-constrained systems.
One minimal compromise could be to put the licenses of the packages in essential to /usr/share/common-licenses: since those get installed on any system, it will surely save space to centralize them. Best Ole
