Bug#801633: lintian: False positive of syntax-error-in-dep5-copyright with documentation example

[Ben Wiederhake <BenWiederhake.GitHub@gmx.de>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.38
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I was trying to get an ITP submission lintian-clean, when I got stumped by a
very stubborn warning, even after reading every sentence in the packaging-
documentation on debian/copyright ever so carefully.

Then I tried the example from the documentation itself [1], and the warning
persists. I report this as a bug in lintian because I believe that lintian
should accept positive examples from the documentation without warning.

To reproduce, clone the given repo [2], and run:

$ lintian -EviIL +pedantic telegram-purple_1.2.2-1.dsc
[SNIP]
W: telegram-purple source: syntax-error-in-dep5-copyright line 18: Cannot parse
line "Copyright 2009, 2010 Angela Watts"
[SNIP]

Note that I intentionally emptied the *.orig.tar.gz, since the contents are
irrelevant to the warning. (The same warning is produced with and without the
original file.)

[1]: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0
/#copyright-field
[2]: https://github.com/BenWiederhake/lintian-copyright



-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.2.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                       2.25.1-3
ii  bzip2                          1.0.6-8
ii  diffstat                       1.60-1
ii  file                           1:5.25-2
ii  gettext                        0.19.6-1
ii  hardening-includes             2.7
ii  intltool-debian                0.35.0+20060710.4
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                0.1.29+b3
ii  libarchive-zip-perl            1.53-1
ii  libclass-accessor-perl         0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                  0.38-1
ii  libdpkg-perl                   1.18.3
ii  libemail-valid-perl            1.196-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl           0.07-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                0.94-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl         0.413-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-8
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl       0.13-1
ii  libtimedate-perl               2.3000-2
ii  liburi-perl                    1.69-1
ii  man-db                         2.7.3-1
ii  patchutils                     0.3.4-1
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]      5.20.2-6
ii  t1utils                        1.38-4
ii  xz-utils                       5.1.1alpha+20120614-2.1

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  dpkg                            1.18.3
pn  libperlio-gzip-perl             <none>
ii  perl                            5.20.2-6
ii  perl-modules [libautodie-perl]  5.20.2-6

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
ii  binutils-multiarch     2.25.1-3
ii  dpkg-dev               1.18.3
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.71-2
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.46-1
pn  libyaml-perl           <none>