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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] checklicenses.py

From: Bálint Réczey <balint@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2016 18:48:34 +0200
Hi,

2016-08-05 23:31 GMT+02:00 Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
...
>
>         'debian/rules' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/copyright' has non-whitelisted license 'LGPL (v2 or later) GPL (v2 or later) LGPL (v2 or later)'
>         'debian/compat' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/geoip_db_paths' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/dirs' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/control' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/changelog' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/patches/series' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/templates' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/postinst' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/license-text-about-dialog' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>         'debian/source/format' has non-whitelisted license 'UNKNOWN'
>
> Balint?  What does Debian do about licenses on these sorts of files?

Generally the recommended practice is using the machine readable
copyright in which all files are covered including the ones in debian/:
https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
...

Files: *
Copyright: 1975-2010 Ulla Upstream
License: GPL-2+

Files: debian/*
Copyright: 2010 Daniela Debianizer
License: GPL-2+

Files: debian/patches/fancy-feature
Copyright: 2010 Daniela Debianizer
License: GPL-3+

Files: */*.1
Copyright: 2010 Manuela Manpager
License: GPL-2+
...

It is also recommended to use the same license for the files in debian/
as used by upstream.
Files not including copyright information is considered to be licensed by
the project's main license, in our case GPL-2+, and in my opinion,
the files in debian/ are covered by GPL-2+, too.

Cheers,
Balint

PS: Rewriting the copyright file to the new format is something I should
have done long time ago. :-\