On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Schuberth, Sebastian wrote:

when debugging an issue in the spdx-tools verifier, I noticed the
SPDX 2.0 specs seem to be inconsistent on whether "+" is a
valid character in a LicenseRef's idstring, like in LicenseRef-[idstring].

I wrote:

I not see any reason why a + would not be allowed in a reference, and
there is no ambiguity since the + always something attached to an id or
ref string, not some free standing symbol.

On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 7:02 PM, Gary O'Neall <gary@...> wrote:

In the 2.0 spec, the + is a unary operator with a specific meaning
(see Appendix IV of the 2.0 spec "Simple License Expressions" subsection
page 82). If we are to use it as an operator with License Ref's, it would
be difficult for a parser to determine when it is part of a reference string
and when it is intended as an operator.

This + is a suffix and not a freestanding character, right?
So "GPL-2.0+" is valid but "GPL-2.0 +" would not be valid?
In this case there would be no issue to have a plus as part of a licenseref:
there is no possible ambiguity.

Then again we would be better off to get rid of the plus entirely!

--
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne