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:
- 'Files: *' should not be implicit
- 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)
- add overall package copyright/license fields to header paragraph
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
- additional licenses (Charles suggested some), or minimize list and refer to what SPDX produces instead (Lars suggested this)
- telling people to use 'other' as a license keyword prevents being able to make unambiguous references between stanzas
- Review document structure. Simplify it if possible. Having Files details in multiple places seems bad, for example. Is "Implementation" a good chapter name?
- "Format:" remove "Note that..." bullet point.
- is 'Implementation' a good chapter name? does it make sense to embed header and files sections at third level?
- 'Copyright': should upstream copyright statement's 'Copyright' or c-in-a-circle be preserved?
- 'License': can first line be a list of alternative licenses?
- add an overview of the kinds of paragraphs that can exist in a dep5 file
- fold field details into field specs, so that one does not need to find information in two places in the document
- have only one example chapter?
- appendix: add reference to SPDX
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?)
- a tool to check that all files in a source package are covered by debian/copyright