DEP 5 is a DEP currently in DRAFT stage.
It is being developed within the DEP process:
http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5
The files can be accessed from the Bazaar version control branch:
$ bzr checkout http://bzr.debian.org/dep/dep5/trunk/ dep5.trunk/
The files can also be browsed through a web interface.
Note that if you're using DEP-5, you should use the version on dep.debian.net, not the version in bzr, since the latter is just a publically visible shared-editing platform.
Archived discussion
Prior to 2009-03-25, the proposal was being developed on this wiki-page. Discussions that were ongoing on this wiki from that point in time archived at Proposals/CopyrightFormat/Archive.
Open topics for DEP-5
The DEP-5 drivers use this wiki page to manage the "to do" list for it. Please don't edit it in a way that will confuse them. This page is public in the interest of transparency. If you have opinions or suggestions or patches, please bring them up on the debian-project mailing list. Thanks.
Success criteria for DEP-5:
- people no longer find things to argue about on an ongoing basis
Current topics:
- globbing syntax in the "Files:" section: what syntax? should there be exception?
- add a "Comment:" field? (there seems to be rough consensus)
Specific fields that need to be discussed (preferably one at a time on debian-project):
Other problems that need to be addressed:
- make sure convertability between DEP-5 and SPDX files is possible
- license shortnames need to be kept compatible with Fedora, SPDX, and other relevant projects (Steve is liasing with them via SPDX)
- the meaning of "public domain" as a license may need clarification
- specify compilation copyright using copyright/license fields in the first section (the non-Files one)? (rough consensus, implementation postponed until other things are dealt with)
- additional licenses (Charles suggested some), or minimize list and refer to what SPDX produces instead (Lars suggested this)
- eliminate mention of YAML; there should be only one syntax for DEP-5
- telling people to use 'other' as a license keyword prevents being able to make unambiguous references between stanzas
- 'Files: *' should not be implicit; this is a diversion from the wiki draft that was made without public discussion
- Have an acknowledgements section for DEP-5 contributors?
Dev-ref ยง6.7.8.2 recommends that if you have to repackage the original source, that the transformations that are performed be recorded in debian/copyright. While there was recently some discussion on d-devel about whether repackaging just to remove distributable-but-not-dfsg-free material was worth it or not, the case where a source tarball contains non-distributable material still must be dealt with. A field to express what was done would thus fit well with this recommendation. Further discussion as to whether it should/could be a find -delete command, a "see README.Debian-source" comment or some simple description of what was done (e.g. "copy of rfc removed") is sensible. What was done as well as why it was done should probably be included.
Things that need to be done before DEP-5 is ready:
- Integrate the spec into debian-policy, and update it to have a stable Format URL.
Format: URL that points at http://www.debian.org/... instead of dep svn
* consensus: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/08/msg00269.html
Things that might be good to have at some point, outside of the spec text:
- lintian warning for malformed DEP-5 files
- lintian info level message for non-DEP-5 files
- something to track DEP-5 adoption (perhaps by counting the non-DEP-5 lintian tag on lintian.debian.org?)