Re: Fixing "dep5-copyright-license-name-not-unique" and "missing-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright"

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

T o n g <mlist4suntong@yahoo.com> writes:

> I need to fix  "dep5-copyright-license-name-not-unique" and "missing-
> license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright" for my package. Ref, https://
> lintian.debian.org/maintainer/suntong001@users.sourceforge.net.html#dbab

For reference, the current ‘debian/copyright’ file can be seen in the
VCS <URL:https://github.com/suntong/dbab/blob/master/debian/copyright>.

> What's wrong? 

You have given two different long descriptions of the “License” with the
short name “BSD-3-clause”, and Lintian helpfully informs you of this
with the “dep5-copyright-license-name-not-unique” tag.

You should only give the license text used by upstream, once, in one
“License” field in that ‘debian/copyright’ file. All other references to
the same license should have “License: BSD-3-clause”, with just the
short name, no long description.

Now, what you're probably trying to do is to record the *grant* of
license — that's the text that says something like “You are free to
redistribute with or iwthout modifications under the conditions in the
BSD 3-clause license”.

The grant of license is quite commonly very different in different parts
of the work, and you'll want to record the verbatim text in
‘debian/copyright’. But that is not the license text, and so doesn't
belong in the “License” field.

Unfortunately, the version 1.0 specification for the copyright file
doesn't make this very clear; there is no distinct mention of the
license grant text, versus the text of the license.

I recommend you put the license grant text for each paragraph in a
“License-Grant” field for that paragraph. That field isn't defined in
the current specification, but is available for our use.

For example:

    Files: *
    Copyright: 2013-2015 Tong Sun <suntong001@users.sourceforge.net>
    License: BSD-3-Clause
    License-Grant:
      We are the authors and we love you! You are free to redistribute
      this work under the BSD license in LICENSE.BSD.

    Files: bin/dbab-svr
    Copyright: 2013-2015 Tong Sun <suntong001@users.sourceforge.net>
                  Originally wrote by Piet Wintjens, email & date unknown
    License: BSD-3-Clause
      I am Piet Wintjens, writing to you from the past; the BSD license
      is good and I grant you permission to redistribute this work under
      its conditions.


    License: BSD-3-Clause
     Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
     modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
     are met:
     .
     […]

You should be seeking *verbatim* text from the copyright holders that
explicitly grants license, and record that in the copyright information.
I'm recommending the “License-Grant” field for that purpose.

-- 
 \      “By instructing students how to learn, unlearn, and relearn, a |
  `\         powerful new dimension can be added to education.” —Alvin |
_o__)                                    Toffler, _Future Shock_, 1970 |
Ben Finney