Menu item Help -> License doesn't do anything; missing COPYRIGHT file

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Binary package hint: gpredict

In gpredict, if I choose License from the Help menu, nothing happens. In the terminal where I started gpredict I see this:-

2009/03/16 00:20:07|2|2|gpredict_help_show_txt: Failed to load /usr/share/gpredict/COPYING (No such file or directory)

It's right too..

alan@wopr:~$ ls -l /usr/share/gpredict/
total 100
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 695 2008-02-13 18:58 AUTHORS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 61742 2008-02-13 18:58 ChangeLog
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-16 00:09 data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10763 2008-02-13 18:58 NEWS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4614 2008-02-13 18:58 README
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1172 2008-02-13 18:58 TODO

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gpredict 0.9.0-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gpredict
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-9-generic i686

[Bruce Cowan (bruce89-deactivatedaccount)]

Confirmed

[Kamal Mostafa (kamalmostafa)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. I confirm that this problem still occurs in Ubuntu Lucid (gpredict 1.1-3ubuntu1) -- the COPYRIGHT file is still missing.

I have forwarded the problem to gpredict developers at:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2959979&group_id=213550&atid=1026162

[Alexandru Csete (alexc)]

Hi,

Is there anything expected from the upstream developers regarding this matter?
If I understand correctly, the problem is in the debian/ubuntu specific files and these are not included in the upstream repository.

Maybe the fix is as simple as including the COPYING file at line 27 in
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/lucid/gpredict/lucid/annotate/head%3A/debian/rules

Cheers
Alex

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

This is a side effect of the common practice of not including COPYING, but rather documenting things in e.g. /usr/share/doc/gpredict/copyright. In the case of GPLv2, a common file is shipped (/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2) to save the space of including a separate copy of the license for *every* package under this license (as this is a fairly large number). I believe the upstream behaviour is absolutely correct, and does not need modification. I believe that since COPYING is not shipped, it needs a distribution-level patch to have the menu item open /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 to show the license.

[Kamal Mostafa (kamalmostafa)]

@Alex - correct, no upstream source change needed. thanks for poking the bug.

@Emmet - thanks very much for the direction. I will ship a patch to Debian.

[Kamal Mostafa (kamalmostafa)]

Patch has been sent to Debian.

[AA1VS (hamaa1vs)]

Syncing with debian