Pkg xen devel - Dec 2024 - Bug#1089621: xen: Invalid copyright years "2022-present"

Source: xen
Version: 4.17.3+36-g54dacb5c02-1
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 2.3, 4.5, 12.5
X-Debbugs-CC: ftpmaster at debian.org

Dear maintainer,

    Copyright 2022-present Keir Fraser and/or many others"

is not a valid copyright claim.  Copyright is always time-limited, so it
simply does not make sense to say "-present".

Also, our copyright format is already implicitly "and/or" for names
under a given stanza, so it should be just "and", I think.

If you're reproducing this from the upstream sources because that's
what they typed and the GPL requires you to reproduce copyright claims,
then please take this up with them.

If this is something that someone came up with for Debian purposes,
please use

    Copyright: 2002-2024  Keir Fraser and many others

Thanks.

-- 
Sean Whitton

Hi,

On 12/10/24 03:51, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Source: xen
> Version: 4.17.3+36-g54dacb5c02-1
> Severity: serious
> Justification: Policy 2.3, 4.5, 12.5
> X-Debbugs-CC: ftpmaster at debian.org
> 
> Dear maintainer,
> 
>     Copyright 2022-present Keir Fraser and/or many others"
> 
> is not a valid copyright claim.  Copyright is always time-limited, so it
> simply does not make sense to say "-present".
> 
> Also, our copyright format is already implicitly "and/or" for
names
> under a given stanza, so it should be just "and", I think.
> 
> If you're reproducing this from the upstream sources because that's
> what they typed and the GPL requires you to reproduce copyright claims,
> then please take this up with them.
> 
> If this is something that someone came up with for Debian purposes,
> please use
> 
>     Copyright: 2002-2024  Keir Fraser and many others
Yes, this needs some more improvement indeed.

The upstream Copyright situation is quite mad:
https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/blob/experimental/COPYING

If I had to summarize this in two words, it would be "Good Luck!". :)
  "Most files in this repository are licensed" jadija and there are
tons
of exceptions scattered around everywhere, have fun discovering them.

There's not even a Copyright statement in COPYING, by the way. Also not
in xen/COPYING. So, this is all a bit confusing for me.

Almost two years ago, I tried to rewrite d/copyright from scratch,
because the previous version was even more incorrect:

https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/commit/72298af566e256afc26a569f39d778b42d68277e

I learned a few things from doing that, but it was also pretty mind
numbing. Apparently, in the end, the text "Copyright: 2002-present Keir
Fraser and/or many others" is something I came up with myself, as some
sort of ultimate summary of all the things I had encountered. And,
probably because I thought the field was mandatory to have... :O

A few days ago, I have been looking around at existing tooling to help
analyzing the upstream source tree. I ended up trying cme /
scan-copyrights which on first try results in a ~3750 line file with 761
different entries...:

https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/commit/dfaea02db1f014ee4c821d3ae9422b410d45fb03

It also shows "Copyright: no-info-found", so maybe that's the
answer to
what should be mentioned instead?

Also, if anyone has tips about this... or the best helper tools to
use... appreciated. Or if you know someone who works on one of those
tools... Just point them to src:xen as the ultimate terror test package. :)

.oO(Well, all jokes aside... It's clear that if we want a fully correct
d/copyright file, which can also still be maintained over time, there is
probably no other sane way to do that than having something automated
that can help.)

Hans

Hello,

On Thu 19 Dec 2024 at 10:47pm +01, Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> I learned a few things from doing that, but it was also pretty mind
> numbing. Apparently, in the end, the text "Copyright: 2002-present
Keir
> Fraser and/or many others" is something I came up with myself, as some
> sort of ultimate summary of all the things I had encountered. And,
> probably because I thought the field was mandatory to have... :O
Thanks for looking.

As I said, just replacing it with 'Copyright: 2002-2024' and updating it
once a year would solve this bug.

-- 
Sean Whitton
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On 12/20/24 03:49, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Thu 19 Dec 2024 at 10:47pm +01, Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> 
>> I learned a few things from doing that, but it was also pretty mind
>> numbing. Apparently, in the end, the text "Copyright: 2002-present
Keir
>> Fraser and/or many others" is something I came up with myself, as
some
>> sort of ultimate summary of all the things I had encountered. And,
>> probably because I thought the field was mandatory to have... :O
> 
> Thanks for looking.
> 
> As I said, just replacing it with 'Copyright: 2002-2024' and
updating it
> once a year would solve this bug.
Clear. Then I'll indeed do at least that for now.

Thanks,
Hans

Your message dated Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:03:03 +0000
with message-id <E1tOvO3-008Tcn-76 at fasolo.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#1089621: fixed in xen 4.19.1-1~exp4
has caused the Debian Bug report #1089621,
regarding xen: Invalid copyright years "2022-present"
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner at bugs.debian.org
immediately.)


-- 
1089621: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1089621
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner at bugs.debian.org with problems
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Subject: Bug#1089621: fixed in xen 4.19.1-1~exp4
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Your message dated Mon, 23 Dec 2024 11:34:34 +0000
with message-id <E1tPghm-001fVR-9b at fasolo.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#1089621: fixed in xen 4.19.1-1
has caused the Debian Bug report #1089621,
regarding xen: Invalid copyright years "2022-present"
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner at bugs.debian.org
immediately.)


-- 
1089621: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1089621
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner at bugs.debian.org with problems
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