copyright: undust the copyright notice to reflect current state
There is about 100 different contributors, so lets concentrate on the main ones.
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- cd50c1356ace - copyright: convert debian/copyright to the machine-readable format
- 8c024ba1710f - copyright: undust the copyright notice to reflect current state
1 This software was downloaded from 2 https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/evolve/ 1 Format: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ 2 Upstream-Name: evolve 3 Source: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/evolve/ 4 5 Files: * 6 Copyright: 7 2011—2022 Pierre-Yves David <pierre-yves.david@octobus.net> 8 Anton Shestakov <av6@dwimlabs.net> 9 and others 10 License: GPL-2+ 11 12 Files: debian/* 13 Copyright: 14 2022 Georges Racinet <georges.racinet@octobus.net> How do these
Files:
blocks work? Saying all files under debian/ are copyright @gracinet would not be correct in this repo (according to hg log debian/). Especially if it means he holds the only copyright over those files. It might be correct in downstream repo (e.g. the one on salsa.debian.org) IF the more general copyright also applies (in which case "and others" line would be applicable).I agree with that. Actually this version is the one that was suggested as example on salsa.d.o (without knowledge of people involved in previous packaging work). I'm all for adding the people involved (as
hg log debian/
says).I believe that the technical side of your question about how the
Files:
block works is answered in https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/changed this line in version 3 of the diff
I added a fairer list about the debian/ subdirectory (still including myself even though I don't have many contributions in this repo, but I'm making the official Debian work and will contribute back the significant changes).
This is done as a separate commit for clarity, but I don't mind folding with the one by @marmoute
I'm not going to argue for removing anyone from the list, but it does look noticeably longer than what I'd seen in a handful of packages that I found on salsa (it's also 11 copyright owners for just 9 files in debian/). But whatever, I guess this is fine.
I've seen a phrase "means to unambiguously identify who to contact to participate in the development of the upstream source code" in https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s-copyrightfile but I suppose it only applies to the Upstream-Contact field, not Copyright field. Because apart from 3-4 people in the list, it won't be appropriate to contact anyone if there's an issue somewhere in debian/.
1 This software was downloaded from 2 https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/evolve/ 1 Format: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ 2 Upstream-Name: evolve 3 Source: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/evolve/ 4 5 Files: * 6 Copyright: 7 2011—2022 Pierre-Yves David <pierre-yves.david@octobus.net> 8 Anton Shestakov <av6@dwimlabs.net> 9 and others (I tried to find if this block could be improved/expanded, but somehow ended up going in the opposite direction.)
We could run hg log and count the amount of commits in the repo per author, if needed. But the question is: considering it's easy to pull full and detailed authorship statistics from a VCS nowadays, who cares about copyrights in this file and to what extent? AFAIU this file is just to check license compatibility with Debian, and, since this field is pretty free-format, we can say what https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/mercurial-devel/-/blob/branch/default/CONTRIBUTORS file say: "see changelog directly".
The best reference I can find is is https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s-copyrightfile
In any case, the previous list was obviously wrong (2011 only and you're not even mentioned).
I suppose it would be ok to supplement the others by "(see changelog directly)".
For context, here's the copyright file in Mercurial Debian package. Excerpt:
Files: * Copyright: 2005-2021, Olivia Mackall and many others. License: GPL-2+
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- 74cdefb80df8 - copyright: update for the debian/ subdirectory
added Pre-reviewed label
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- 621e23004aa1 - copyright: update for the debian/ subdirectory
I did a quick, non comprehensive analysis of Debian packages installed on my laptop:
- found a single one whose copyright did not include an explicit person or organization (but it doesn't use the machine-parseable format and defines 3 upstream maintainers).
- indeed, I feel the 'others' as written by @marmoute is good enough (as it is with Mercurial itself and many Debian packages)
- in the case of
debian/
, I feel that this is a specialized expertise, and individual contributions, even with one commit are more important. I wasn't there but I guess that the expertise of jcristau really made a difference when the project started.
Bottom-line: the current version (just rebased) is good enough for me. If you find it "sane", @marmoute, please go ahead.
added 5 commits
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621e2300...6faab8da - 2 commits from branch
branch/stable
- fc877278f79e - copyright: convert debian/copyright to the machine-readable format
- 06711ddb4c1c - copyright: undust the copyright notice to reflect current state
- 9571d40061c8 - copyright: update for the debian/ subdirectory
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