Lintian tag: copyright-refers-to-symlink-license

Type: pedantic

Description (from lintian-explain-tags)

The copyright file refers to the versionless symlink in
/usr/share/common-licenses for the full text of the GPL, LGPL, or GFDL
license. This symlink is updated to point to the latest version of the
license when a new one is released. The package appears to allow
relicensing under later versions of its license, so this is legally
consistent, but it implies that Debian will relicense the package under
later versions of those licenses as they're released. It is normally
better to point to the version of the license the package references in
its license statement.

For example, if the package says something like "you may redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your
option) any later version", the debian/copyright file should refer to
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2, not /GPL.

For packages released under the same terms as Perl, Perl references the
GPL version 1, so point to /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-1.

Visibility: pedantic
Show-Always: no
Check: debian/copyright

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