deb.package shows License: Unknown, updates: Unknown

[isidorn]

#3239

When opening our .deb package in the software center I see that license and updates show unknown. This does not look user friendly, could we improve it somehow?

[Tyriar]

Looks like license might be pulled from the debian/copyright file:

• https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
• https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/dreq.en.html

Updates may be pulled from debian/changelog, not sure we would want to maintain this file though.

[Tyriar]

Ubuntu Software Center has an issue where it displays only those in official repos, not based on the DEBIAN/copyright file:

What is currently in Karmic Beta is not very good nor useful.

it just says

"License: Open Source"

For everything in main and universe

and "unknown" for things in multiverse
"proprietary" for things in restricted

instead of "Open Source" software-center needs to use the copyright information from the packages

see http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-center/+bug/435183/comments/5

This issue can be closed when the DEBIAN/copyright file serves the correct license for both official and OSS builds.

[Tyriar]

Actually considering that this license does not seem to be exposed anywhere, just available by extracting the deb, I won't go ahead with this.