Re: doubts about debian/copyrights
On Sat, Oct 22, 2022 at 03:59:01PM +0200, Fabio Fantoni wrote:
> Hi, I had in several cases with difficulties with debian/copyright but in
> most cases with the help of decopy plus any other manual checks and
> searches, investing a little time I was able to find "the solution".
>
> Recently I had more difficult with latest packages (mint-y-icons mint-themes
> and mint-x-icons).
>
These are the themes and icons from Mint?
Ask them directly what licenses the files are under - they are "their" files.
If they can't find licenses for them, ask them where they got them from and
chase back to the original files from wherever they came from.
A copyright holder can distribute their own work under any combination of
license or copyright, obviously, but it might be wise to ask politely. Explain
why you're packaging this for Debian - that it will take the load off their
mirrors and will also stop people producing mixed systems (FrankenDebian).
It may also be worth pointing out politely that any license can't be just
for Debian as other Debian derivates might pick the files up - and any
license just for Debian automatically goes into Debian non-free.
> Since decopy didn't seem enough I tried licensecheck which seemed to be the
> most used in debian (or am I wrong?) but in these cases gave a very long
> output "strange" and unusable, I suppose for unexpected cases.
>
> Which would be the best tool(s) to get a good starting debian/copyright and
> decrease the time it takes to complete and fix it?
>
licensecheck is probably a fairly good idea anyway.
> I have one specific issue still not solved related to mint-x-icons:
>
> decopy spotted one file (usr/share/icons/Mint-X/apps/96/miro.svg) with
> license "CC-BY", I tried a search for found the specific license used but I
> not found, in mint-theme instead for example about a license doubt I went to
> look for the origin and I found it and solved it (https://salsa.debian.org/cinnamon-team/mint-themes/-/commit/dcf71951df39f326ea9057d39095f7e94926bf19),
> regarding this file, however, the site mentioned inside no longer exists and
> therefore I have not found a certain answer.
>
Does the site exist on the Wayback Machine / Internet Archive?
If you can't be sure, then you may be unable to distribute the file. Again,
ask Mint because they must have packaged it originally.
> there are also some other files with "creative common" found inside it with
> a grep but that was not spotted by decopy and also in these there aren't
> details on the exact license
>
Contact Mint / the original authors. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for
the information, I think.
> what do you recommend about it?
>
> thanks for any reply
>
With every good wish, as ever,
Andy Cater
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