Re: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

[Richard Fontana]

Re-reading the SPDX matching guidelines, one sentence I had been completely 
overlooking seems to address some of the concerns I've had about 
BSD-3-Clause-variant licenses: "T he text indicated as such can be replaced 
with similar values (e.g., a different name or generic term; different date) 
and still be considered a positive match." However I find this sentence 
difficult to interpret -- do "similar" and "different" refer to the 
parameterized things in the SPDX version, or do they instead go to internal 
consistency within a real-world instance of a license type? -- and I might not 
be reading it correctly. 

In light of that sentence, the way I am assuming it should be read, the colored 
items in, for example, https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause.html are not 
supposed to be understood to be strict internally-consistent placeholders - for 
example, the fact that " THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS" is used in the 
first sentence in the disclaimer does not mean that " THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR 
CONTRIBUTORS " is supposed to correspond to the first sentence such that an 
instantiation of "COPYRIGHT HOLDER" in the first sentence must match an 
instantiation of "COPYRIGHT HOLDER" in the second sentence (as an aside, I 
assume the inconsistency in pluralization of COPYRIGHT HOLDER is the result of 
copying of the OSI version of the 3-clause BSD license, which probably will get 
fixed on the OSI website). 

In the case of the GHC license, we have a very small discrepancy relative to 
the SPDX version: " THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW AND THE 
CONTRIBUTORS" in the first sentence of the disclaimer and " THE UNIVERSITY 
COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW OR THE CONTRIBUTORS" in the second sentence. 
I can read the sentence I quoted above from the matching guidelines to indicate 
that "THE CONTRIBUTORS" matches article-less "CONTRIBUTORS", but if that's a 
correct reading I think it should be stated more clearly. 


- Original Message -

From: "W. Trevor King" <wk...@tremily.us> 
To: "David A Wheeler" <dwhee...@ida.org> 
Cc: "Richard Fontana" <rfont...@redhat.com>, "J Lovejoy" 
<opensou...@jilayne.com>, "SPDX-legal" <spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>, "David 
Parrish" <daveparr...@tutanota.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2017 3:13:40 PM 
Subject: Re: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License 

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 02:59:30PM -0400, Wheeler, David A wrote: 


Richard Fontana: 
> The way I read the matching guidelines this license does not 
> actually match to BSD-3-Clause, even though it obviously should. 
> I think the problem is that I am reading the matching guidelines 
> more literally than they may be intended to be read, but given 
> that this is supposed to be a formal specification I think the 
> matching guidelines ought to be made more precise. For example, if 
> the word "the" is optional in certain contexts for purposes of 
> matching, that ought to be accounted for in the formulation of the 
> matching guidelines. 

I think those are bugs in the matching guidelines, not a failure to 
match ☺. If there are bugs, I think they should be fixed! 

Are you suggesting a blanket: 




All articles (“a”, “an”, “the”, …) are optional for matching 
purposes. 

in [1]? Or are you suggesting BSD-3-Clause be updated to use: 

3. Neither <<var;name=organizationArticleClause3;original=the ;match=.+>>name 
of 

Cheers, 
Trevor 

[1]: https://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines 

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RE: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

[Wheeler, David A]

Richard Fontana:
> The way I read the matching guidelines this license does not actually match 
> to BSD-3-Clause, even though it obviously should.  I think the problem is 
> that I am reading the matching guidelines more literally than they may be 
> intended to be read, but given that this is supposed to be a formal 
> specification I think the matching guidelines ought to be made more precise. 
> For example, if the word "the" is optional in certain contexts for purposes 
> of matching, that ought to be accounted for in the formulation of the 
> matching guidelines.

I think those are bugs in the matching guidelines, not a failure to match ☺.  
If there are bugs, I think they should be fixed!

--- David A. Wheeler

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Re: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

[Richard Fontana]

The way I read the matching guidelines this license does not actually match to 
BSD-3-Clause, even though it obviously should. I think the problem is that I am 
reading the matching guidelines more literally than they may be intended to be 
read, but given that this is supposed to be a formal specification I think the 
matching guidelines ought to be made more precise. For example, if the word 
"the" is optional in certain contexts for purposes of matching, that ought to 
be accounted for in the formulation of the matching guidelines. (I recently was 
engaged in an activity in which I attempted to make use of SPDX identifiers and 
found this to be a common problem, particularly with respect to licenses 
closely resembling the specified templates for BSD-3-Clause and BSD-2-Clause). 

- Original Message -

From: "J Lovejoy" <opensou...@jilayne.com> 
To: "David Wheeler" <dwhee...@ida.org> 
Cc: "SPDX-legal" <spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>, "David Parrish" 
<daveparr...@tutanota.com> 
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2017 12:02:03 AM 
Subject: Re: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License 

Hi David (P), 

David W is right - this is the same license as BSD-3-Clause. The only 
difference is in the “replaceable” text (i.e., the names) as per the license 
matching guidelines and which you can see visually in the red text on the 
license webpage here: https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause.html 

Thanks, 
Jilayne 


SPDX Legal Team co-lead 
opensou...@jilayne.com 





On May 1, 2017, at 11:44 AM, Wheeler, David A < dwhee...@ida.org > wrote: 

David Parrish: 


1. Provide a proposed Full Name for the license or exception. 
The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License 
2. Provide a proposed Short Identifier. 
ghc 
3. Provide a functioning url reference to the license or exception text, either 
from the author or a community recognized source. 
https://www.haskell.org/ghc/license 



This appears to be an existing SPDX license, BSD-3-Clause. See: 
https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause 

This is a widely-used OSI-approved license. 

--- David A. Wheeler 

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Re: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

[J Lovejoy]

Hi David (P),

David W is right - this is the same license as BSD-3-Clause. The only 
difference is in the “replaceable” text (i.e., the names) as per the license 
matching guidelines and which you can see visually in the red text on the 
license webpage here: https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause.html 


Thanks,
Jilayne


SPDX Legal Team co-lead
opensou...@jilayne.com


> On May 1, 2017, at 11:44 AM, Wheeler, David A  wrote:
> 
> David Parrish:
>> 1. Provide a proposed Full Name for the license or exception.
>> The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License
>> 2. Provide a proposed Short Identifier.
>> ghc
>> 3. Provide a functioning url reference to the license or exception text, 
>> either from the author or a community recognized source.
>> https://www.haskell.org/ghc/license
> 
> This appears to be an existing SPDX license, BSD-3-Clause.  See:
>  https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
> 
> This is a widely-used OSI-approved license.
> 
> --- David A. Wheeler
> 
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RE: New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

[Wheeler, David A]

David Parrish:
> 1. Provide a proposed Full Name for the license or exception.
> The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License
> 2. Provide a proposed Short Identifier.
> ghc
>3. Provide a functioning url reference to the license or exception text, 
>either from the author or a community recognized source.
> https://www.haskell.org/ghc/license

This appears to be an existing SPDX license, BSD-3-Clause.  See:
  https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

This is a widely-used OSI-approved license.

--- David A. Wheeler

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New License Request: The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

[David Parrish]

1. Provide a proposed Full Name for the license or exception.
The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License

2. Provide a proposed Short Identifier.
ghc
3. Provide a functioning url reference to the license or exception text, either 
from the author or a community recognized source.
https://www.haskell.org/ghc/license

4. Create and attach a text file with the license or exception text from the 
url provided in #3. Please proofread the text file to ensure that:Information 
has not been lost or modified.Formatting is clean and consistent with the 
license or exception URL.
See attached file: LICENSE

5. Indicate whether the license is OSI-approved (see: 
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical) or whether it has been 
submitted for approval to the OSI and is currently under review.
I have no idea.
6. Provide a short explanation regarding the need for this license or exception 
to be included on the SPDX License List, including identifying at least one 
program that uses this license.

I am referencing a license within the Habitat software. Habitat uses this list 
to reference a license but the GHC license doesn't exist in the list.

LICENSE
Description: Binary data
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