Re: license terms for /etc/release

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <CAPOrs_1cc0SLL81r68ySRsPY-7h0PXu8cAPKP6O6-550eAyhuA%mail.gmail.com@localhost>,
Carnë Draug  <carandraug+dev%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>Hi
>
>I am packaging a perl distribution (system-info) for Debian which
>includes the file /etc/release from NetBSD systems [1,2].  This files
>have a copyright header but no actual copyright terms which makes them
>a bit problematic for distribution.
>
>On freenode's #NetBSD I was told that the file is not really under
>copyright, and that the notice pertains to the entire NetBSD release.
>I would guess then that the file is either not copyrightable or under
>the same license as the rest of the distribution.  For what is worth,
>that notice is there via [3, 4].
>
>If someone could confirm or clarify the situation, that would be great
>as then I would have a link to use as reference.
>
>Thank you
>Carnë
>
>[1] https://github.com/Tux/System-Info/blob/master/t/etc/netbsd-6.99.24/release
>[2] https://github.com/Tux/System-Info/blob/master/t/etc/netbsd-7.99.4/release
>[3] https://nxr.netbsd.org/xref/src/etc/Makefile#206
>[4] https://nxr.netbsd.org/xref/src/sys/conf/copyright
>


The copyright contained in /etc/release refer to the entire OS release
distribution, and not to the particular file. To be even more clear,
this file contains information about the particular release, and the
copyrights listed in the file are part of that information.

Best,

christos