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dfsg-author-check 0.1.0

Package Information

Descriptionfind copyright holders missing from debian/copyright

dfsg-author-check walks an unpacked Debian source package, picks out the copyright attributions in its files and lists the holders that its debian/copyright does not name, allowing for differences of spelling, encoding and form.

The report ends with Files paragraphs, ready to edit and add to debian/copyright. It can also be written as JSON or Markdown, for use by other tools such as the DFSG team's NEW queue review.

MaintainerDebian DFSG Team <dfsg-team@lists.debian.org>
Changed ByAndrew McMillan <awm@debian.org>
Sponsorawm@debian.org
Distributionunstable
Architectureany
VCSgit: https://salsa.debian.org/dfsg-team/dfsg-author-check.git (browse)
Trackerhttps://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dfsg-author-check
Uploaded2 hours ago

New Package Report

.changes◂
Distributionunstable
DateSun, 18 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +1300
Sourcedfsg-author-check
Version0.1.0
Changed-ByAndrew McMillan <awm@debian.org>
Architecturesource amd64
Changelog◂
dfsg-author-check (0.1.0) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Initial release.
.dsc◂
Priorityoptional
Componentmain
Package-Listdfsg-author-check deb devel optional arch=any
Sectiondevel
debian/copyright◂
Format: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
Source: https://salsa.debian.org/dfsg-team/dfsg-author-check
Upstream-Name: dfsg-author-check
Upstream-Contact: Andrew McMillan <andrew@mcmillan.net.nz>

Files: *
Copyright: 2026 Andrew McMillan <andrew@mcmillan.net.nz>
License: CC0-1.0

Files: *_test.go
Copyright: 2026 Andrew McMillan <andrew@mcmillan.net.nz>
License: CC0-1.0
Comment: The copyright lines in the tests ("Alice Example", "Bob Other" and
 the like) are made-up examples for the check to find, and name no holders.
 dfsg-author-check run on its own source lists them all.

Files: debian/*
Copyright: 2026 Andrew McMillan <awm@debian.org>
License: CC0-1.0

License: CC0-1.0
 Creative Commons Legal Code
 .
 CC0 1.0 Universal
 .
     CREATIVE COMMONS CORPORATION IS NOT A LAW FIRM AND DOES NOT PROVIDE
     LEGAL SERVICES. DISTRIBUTION OF THIS DOCUMENT DOES NOT CREATE AN
     ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. CREATIVE COMMONS PROVIDES THIS
     INFORMATION ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. CREATIVE COMMONS MAKES NO WARRANTIES
     REGARDING THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENT OR THE INFORMATION OR WORKS
     PROVIDED HEREUNDER, AND DISCLAIMS LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM
     THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENT OR THE INFORMATION OR WORKS PROVIDED
     HEREUNDER.
 .
 Statement of Purpose
 .
 The laws of most jurisdictions throughout the world automatically confer
 exclusive Copyright and Related Rights (defined below) upon the creator
 and subsequent owner(s) (each and all, an "owner") of an original work of
 authorship and/or a database (each, a "Work").
 .
 Certain owners wish to permanently relinquish those rights to a Work for
 the purpose of contributing to a commons of creative, cultural and
 scientific works ("Commons") that the public can reliably and without fear
 of later claims of infringement build upon, modify, incorporate in other
 works, reuse and redistribute as freely as possible in any form whatsoever
 and for any purposes, including without limitation commercial purposes.
 These owners may contribute to the Commons to promote the ideal of a free
 culture and the further production of creative, cultural and scientific
 works, or to gain reputation or greater distribution for their Work in
 part through the use and efforts of others.
 .
 For these and/or other purposes and motivations, and without any
 expectation of additional consideration or compensation, the person
 associating CC0 with a Work (the "Affirmer"), to the extent that he or she
 is an owner of Copyright and Related Rights in the Work, voluntarily
 elects to apply CC0 to the Work and publicly distribute the Work under its
 terms, with knowledge of his or her Copyright and Related Rights in the
 Work and the meaning and intended legal effect of CC0 on those rights.
 .
 1. Copyright and Related Rights. A Work made available under CC0 may be
 protected by copyright and related or neighboring rights ("Copyright and
 Related Rights"). Copyright and Related Rights include, but are not
 limited to, the following:
 .
   i. the right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform, display,
      communicate, and translate a Work;
  ii. moral rights retained by the original author(s) and/or performer(s);
 iii. publicity and privacy rights pertaining to a person's image or
      likeness depicted in a Work;
  iv. rights protecting against unfair competition in regards to a Work,
      subject to the limitations in paragraph 4(a), below;
   v. rights protecting the extraction, dissemination, use and reuse of data
      in a Work;
  vi. database rights (such as those arising under Directive 96/9/EC of the
      European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal
      protection of databases, and under any national implementation
      thereof, including any amended or successor version of such
      directive); and
 vii. other similar, equivalent or corresponding rights throughout the
      world based on applicable law or treaty, and any national
      implementations thereof.
 .
 2. Waiver. To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention
 of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently,
 irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all of
 Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights and associated claims and causes
 of action, whether now known or unknown (including existing as well as
 future claims and causes of action), in the Work (i) in all territories
 worldwide, (ii) for the maximum duration provided by applicable law or
 treaty (including future time extensions), (iii) in any current or future
 medium and for any number of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever,
 including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional
 purposes (the "Waiver"). Affirmer makes the Waiver for the benefit of each
 member of the public at large and to the detriment of Affirmer's heirs and
 successors, fully intending that such Waiver shall not be subject to
 revocation, rescission, cancellation, termination, or any other legal or
 equitable action to disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the Work by the public
 as contemplated by Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose.
 .
 3. Public License Fallback. Should any part of the Waiver for any reason
 be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, then the
 Waiver shall be preserved to the maximum extent permitted taking into
 account Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose. In addition, to the
 extent the Waiver is so judged Affirmer hereby grants to each affected
 person a royalty-free, non transferable, non sublicensable, non exclusive,
 irrevocable and unconditional license to exercise Affirmer's Copyright and
 Related Rights in the Work (i) in all territories worldwide, (ii) for the
 maximum duration provided by applicable law or treaty (including future
 time extensions), (iii) in any current or future medium and for any number
 of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever, including without
 limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes (the
 "License"). The License shall be deemed effective as of the date CC0 was
 applied by Affirmer to the Work. Should any part of the License for any
 reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, such
 partial invalidity or ineffectiveness shall not invalidate the remainder
 of the License, and in such case Affirmer hereby affirms that he or she
 will not (i) exercise any of his or her remaining Copyright and Related
 Rights in the Work or (ii) assert any associated claims and causes of
 action with respect to the Work, in either case contrary to Affirmer's
 express Statement of Purpose.
 .
 4. Limitations and Disclaimers.
 .
  a. No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned,
     surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.
  b. Affirmer offers the Work as-is and makes no representations or
     warranties of any kind concerning the Work, express, implied,
     statutory or otherwise, including without limitation warranties of
     title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non
     infringement, or the absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or
     the present or absence of errors, whether or not discoverable, all to
     the greatest extent permissible under applicable law.
  c. Affirmer disclaims responsibility for clearing rights of other persons
     that may apply to the Work or any use thereof, including without
     limitation any person's Copyright and Related Rights in the Work.
     Further, Affirmer disclaims responsibility for obtaining any necessary
     consents, permissions or other rights required for any use of the
     Work.
  d. Affirmer understands and acknowledges that Creative Commons is not a
     party to this document and has no duty or obligation with respect to
     this CC0 or use of the Work.

DFSG Assistant LLM REVIEW 0 blocker, 0 important, 0 minor

This is an LLM based review using a Debian Inference based workflow. It was not written by a member of the DFSG team and has not been checked by one. It is not a decision on the package: it may be wrong, and it may have missed things.

Reviewed 1 hour ago.

Report◂

DFSG NEW review for dfsg-author-check version 0.1.0

Summary

  • Licensing is DFSG-compliant and debian/copyright is accurate: Yes
  • Packaging is of good quality: Yes
  • Issues: 0 blocker, 0 important, 0 minor
  • debian/watch: absent (native package)
  • debian/copyright: machine-readable
  • Scan before the review: nothing found

Licensing

The source is entirely the DFSG-free CC0-1.0, stated in LICENSE and reproduced in full in the DEP-5 debian/copyright, which has a catch-all stanza, a stanza for the test files and one for debian/*. Every file in the tree is covered, no third-party code is embedded (go.mod has no require lines and the code is standard library only), and the copyright holder named by the package is the same everywhere. The many extra names the pre-scan lists are invented fixtures inside the test files, which the copyright's *_test.go stanza explicitly accounts for.

Packaging

Packaging is clean and current: debhelper compat 14 with dpkg-build-api level 1, dh-golang correctly driven, binary installed through dh_install from debian/tmp, man page and README installed, autopkgtest-pkg-go declared, valid changelog, Vcs-* fields and a current Standards-Version. Build-Depends were checked against the archive and the debhelper behaviour at compat 14 was confirmed; no missing or wrong dependency or install path was found.

Issues

None.

Verified

  • Read all 15 upstream files (authorcheck/, cmd/dfsg-author-check/, doc/, Makefile, go.mod, README.md, CLAUDE.md, LICENSE) and all 10 files of debian/; there are no patches, no .pc/, no binary, minified or generated files, and no vendored third-party code (go.mod: module salsa.debian.org/dfsg-team/dfsg-author-check / go 1.24, no require lines).
  • Pre-scan copyright holders: all the names listed (Alice Example, Bob Other, Petra Sampleworth, Free Software Foundation, Inc, etc.) come from quoted example copyright lines in authorcheck/authorcheck_test.go, authorcheck/stanza_test.go and cmd/dfsg-author-check/main_test.go (e.g. authorcheck_test.go:19-64, stanza_test.go:13-16, main_test.go:30-153), including the verbatim GPL and autotools headers at authorcheck/authorcheck_test.go:375-400; they are test fixtures, not holders of the package. debian/copyright's Files: *_test.go stanza (with its Comment) covers those files, and Files: * matches any depth per copyright-format 6.9.
  • debian/copyright is DEP-5 with Format, Source, Upstream-Name and Upstream-Contact, stanzas Files: *, Files: *_test.go and Files: debian/* (all CC0-1.0), and a stand-alone License: CC0-1.0 paragraph containing the complete licence text, which is not in /usr/share/common-licenses; that text matches the shipped LICENSE file, including its end.
  • Licence evidence across the tree: no GPL/LGPL/Apache/BSD/MIT headers, no SPDX-License-Identifier, no 'All rights reserved' and no non-free wording outside test fixtures; README.md and the man page state CC0-1.0, and CC0-1.0 is DFSG-free.
  • debian/control: debhelper-compat (= 14) matches debian/rules; dh-golang (>= 1.66~) is satisfied by 1.67 and golang-any (>= 2:1.24~) by 2:1.27~1 (apt-cache); dpkg-build-api (= 1) is the documented declaration and is provided by dpkg-dev 1.23.11 (apt-cache, dpkg-build-api(7)); dh-sequence-golang activates the addon; XS-Go-Import-Path matches the module line.
  • debian/rules: --buildsystem=golang with --no-source is the documented dh-golang use for a program (Debian::Debhelper::Buildsystem::golang(3pm)); --without=single-binary makes dh_auto_install use debian/tmp at compat 14 (debhelper tool quote: compat 14 unconditionally uses --destdir=debian/tmp, single-binary moves that special case), and debian/dfsg-author-check.install then installs usr/bin from debian/tmp, so dh_missing (which fails on leftovers at compat 14) is satisfied.
  • debian/docs installs README.md and debian/manpages installs doc/dfsg-author-check.1 (a complete roff man page); no maintainer scripts, conffiles or links are needed or present.
  • debian/changelog is a well-formed native initial release to unstable by the Uploader, dated Sunday 18 October 2026; Standards-Version 4.7.4 equals the current Policy version (checklist A10 top entry); Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-go is a known test suite (/usr/share/lintian/data/testsuite/known-testsuites).
  • The .dsc matches debian/control (architecture any, version 0.1.0, same Build-Depends and Vcs-*/Homepage fields).
  • There is no debian/watch, and the package is native, so none is needed.

Not confirmed

  • Not built or autopkgtested here (forbidden by the review); inspection of the tree and of the Build-Depends found no cause of build or test failure.

Proposed changes

None.

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