openSUSE packagers' take on the 3 month release cycle

[Vishesh Handa]

On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Scott Kitterman <kde at kitterman.com> wrote:
>
>> > These all have to be test compiled, checked for new or missing files,
>> > checked for files that have moved between packages, checked for
>> > license/copyright updates, etc.
>>
>> I guess you have all this mostly automagically done?
>
> Some yes, some no.  The copyright/licensing stuff is the hardest and it's very
> manual.  It's work that has to be done to ensure we are legally distributing
> the packages, so there's no way around it.

Could you please elaborate why the licensing stuff cannot be automatically done?

Most licenses follow a similar template. In fact most developers just
copy paste the license (as they should). I can imagine writing a
simple script the extract the copyright holder's name and type of
license from any file. Maybe it would only work for 90% of the cases,
but it should still work. And for that remaining 10%, you can always
ask the developer to use a standard version of the license, thereby
decreasing your work in the future.


--
Vishesh Handa