Generation of copyright files

[ct2034]

Background

Debian packages need copyright files according to this format: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/. Currently, copyright files are created by this template https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/bloom/blob/master/bloom/generators/debian/templates/ament_python/copyright.em. Which is producing copyright files that are not strictly following the format.
This is partly because not all the required information is available in current package.xmls. To add the needed information @ralph-lange created ros-infrastructure/rep#347.

ros_license_linter

The linter https://github.com/boschresearch/ros_license_linter has two intended functionalities:

• checking if the license declaration in the package.xml is correct, by scanning the code for existing licenses and comparing that to the declared licenses.
• assembling the information for the copyright files
  But currently, only the first functionality is implemented.
  In a second step, it makes sense to integrate the linter into ament_lint and to make it available as github action.

Why should we have the functionality in a separate package?

There is quite some overlap between the two functionalities of license checking and copyright file creation. So, integrating the functionality to generate copyright files into bloom would create a lot of code duplication when also integrating it into ament_lint.

My Question

With this issue, I would like to ask you @wjwwood, whether you generally agree with this. Because I would then start to implement the PR that would add https://github.com/boschresearch/ros_license_linter as a dependency of bloom and improve the generation of copyright files to match the required format.

Further steps

• In a second step, it would also be desirable to have every package checked by the linter on a bloom release to verify that there are no undeclared licenses in the code. But I think that is a separate discussion.
• I am generally open to moving the license linter into the ros-infrastructure org and to maybe renaming it to something more suitable.

[hellantos]

I think this is a very good idea! Also looking very much forward to having correct copyright files!

[wjwwood]

This is a question for @nuclearsandwich and @cottsay. Having a dependency on that tool might be acceptable, but they would know better.

In general, I support the idea, it's something we always wanted, but never had the resources to make it happen.

[ct2034]

Thanks for the support @wjwwood. Sorry, I assumed you were the maintainer.

[farshbafdoustar]

That really make it easy to have better overview of package copyrights . And that's vital for all of us, having commercial use of ROS in mind.
Looking forward to having it integrated in bloom by @nuclearsandwich 's team.

[ct2034]

@nuclearsandwich @cottsay friendly ping 😄

[Aposhian]

Yes this is very important for commercial use cases and doing our due diligence to respect everyone's copyrights involved. Happy to help out if needed!

[ct2034]

Since I did not get any confirmation by the maintainers for this but I still think my proposed course of action makes sense, I will start to implement the changes next week. Maybe a concrete proposal in form of a pr is easier to judge.

[ros-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on ROS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.ros.org/t/ros-2-tsc-meeting-minutes-4-20-2023/31087/1

[ros-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on ROS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.ros.org/t/ros-2-tsc-meeting-minutes-2023-05-18/31587/1

[ros-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on ROS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.ros.org/t/ros-2-tsc-meeting-minutes-2023-06-15/32038/1

[ros-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on ROS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.ros.org/t/changes-in-the-package-xml-about-licensing/32118/1