Bug #49369 for MooseX-ConfigFromFile: Missing Copyright Information

Wed Sep 02 12:27:09 2009 frequency [...] cpan.org - Ticket created

Subject:

Missing Copyright Information

Hi: While packaging your module for Debian, I noticed that your module doesn't seem to mention copyright information (though it does mention licensing information). In Debian we need copyright/license information for all of the packages we upload. Could you give us (replying to this bug report is fine): years of copyright, copyright holders' names, copyright holders' e-mail addresses. Unfortunately without this information we cannot upload it. This is more than just a Debian issue. I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that both copyright and licensing information is vital for the continued success of open source software. Copyright is what allows you to assert a license, and a license is what ensures open source remains open source, and that users can make use of your software. A great article discussing some of this is "What is Copyleft?" by Richard Stallman: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ Thanks for releasing your work to the CPAN. I apologize in advance for the noise, as I understand that the last thing most authors want to deal with is legal administrivia like this. I do hope, however, that you could (in your continued generosity) help us with this request. Please also consider adding these statements to your code/package README, since we must distribute some evidence of copyright information if it is not in the source package itself. Cheers, Jonathan Yu On behalf of the Debian Perl Team

Wed Sep 02 14:04:24 2009 blblack [...] gmail.com - Taken

Wed Sep 02 14:07:43 2009 blblack [...] gmail.com - Correspondence added

What exactly are you looking for? This module (and others I'm involved in that have had this generic bug created lately) contain in the source / embedded documentation statements recording author and license data. Is it not enough to implicitly assume the author(s) hold the copyright and have licensed it to you under the said licensing terms?

Wed Sep 02 14:07:43 2009 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Wed Sep 02 14:14:09 2009 frequency [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Hi Brandon: On Wed Sep 02 14:07:43 2009, BLBLACK wrote: Show quoted text

> > What exactly are you looking for? This module (and others I'm involved

I would need a line with: Copyright (c) XXXX by Author <email> type line. Show quoted text

> in that have had this generic bug created lately) contain in the source

Yes, I've been trying to address this issue over many of the packages we have. In particular as it stands I cannot update the Catalyst libmodules-catalyst-perl package because of this. I apologize for the noise. Show quoted text

> / embedded documentation statements recording author and license data. > Is it not enough to implicitly assume the author(s) hold the copyright > and have licensed it to you under the said licensing terms?

Technically, in countries that have signed the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, this is true. However, to be on the safe side, my sponsor in Debian doesn't want to upload any packages that do not contain an explicit copyright notice somewhere, or for which we don't have another note (for example referring to this bug report) explaining copyright. Another issue is that this would be a new package in Debian, and all new packages are reviewed by a team called the ftp-masters, who check the copyright information we have in every package. I'm not sure how this will pan out yet, but with DBIx-Class-EncodedColumn, we're trying something where we have a copyright assigned to the people in the AUTHORS and CONTRIBUTORS sections. (You can see it in action here: http://search.cpan.org/~mstrout/DBIx-Class-EncodedColumn-0.00003/lib/DBIx/Class/EncodedColumn.pm). I still have no idea how it will pan out though (ie if the package gets accepted or rejected by the ftp-masters). Thanks for your consideration. I hope this explanation helps. As I mentioned in the original mail, I'm not a lawyer, I'm just trying to get packages into Debian for our users, and having an explicit copyright statement helps a lot. Cheers, Jonathan

Thu Dec 16 14:21:37 2010 bobtfish [...] bobtfish.net - Correspondence added

Fixed in the next release.

Thu Dec 16 14:21:38 2010 bobtfish [...] bobtfish.net - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'