Hi all, I’m currently battling figuring out how to integrate SPDX through REUSE.software and am at a stage of severe head-scratching¹. I am CC’ing Jonas (FSFE, REUSE), in case he is not actively following this list.
While I am referring to REUSE.software² here, the situation is near identical in the Linux kernel licensing rules³. REUSE.software refers to the following tags: • ‘Valid-License-Identifier’ to tag the actual *text of* a license (and ‘License-Text’ to include a copy of its text) • ‘SPDX-Exception-Identifier’ to tag the actual *text of* an exception (and ‘Exception-Text’ to include a copy of its text) Now, I searched the SPDX Specifications 2.1⁴ and I could not find either. What I did find is the ‘SPDX-License-Identifier’, which we all know and love and is used to tag the governing license of a work/file/part. This tag can also include an ‘exception-id’ of course in the form of “‘license-id’ WITH ‘exception-id’”. The issue I have with this is the inconsistency and therefore potential confusion. Namely: On face value ‘SPDX-Exception-Identifier’ and ’SPDX- License-Identifier’ seem to be part of one spec and ‘Valid-License-Identifier’ of another; but the truth is that the first and the last are of one origin, and the middle is in fact the one with a different origin. It seems as if initially the SPDX tags ’SPDX-License-Identifier’ and ‘SPDX- Exception-Identifier’ were used, but then the former changed to ‘Valid- License-Identifier’ in order to avoid confusion. But the exception tag was left unchanged, as it did not clash directly with SPDX specs, which brings us to this mess. Would it be possible to change the ’SPDX-Exception-Identifier’ to ‘Valid- Exception-Identifier’ in the Linux kernel and REUSE.software best practices? I know that this is not an SPDX question directly, but I am pretty sure people involved with both projects are here as well and it is paramount to not break SPDX specs while finding a solution. cheers, Matija Šuklje — 1 I don’t need a doctor, just your guidance here ;) 2 https://reuse.software/practices/2.0/ 3 https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.17/process/license-rules.html 4 https://spdx.org/spdx-specification-21-web-version -- gsm: +386 41 849 552 www: http://matija.suklje.name xmpp: matija.suk...@gabbler.org sip: matija_suk...@ippi.fr -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#2344): https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-legal/message/2344 Mute This Topic: https://lists.spdx.org/mt/24005641/21656 Group Owner: spdx-legal+ow...@lists.spdx.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-legal/unsub [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
