J Lovejoy:

> Do NOT add a identifier or operator, etc. for the found-license-text-only scenario where you don’t know if the intent of the copyright holder was “only or “or later” and are thus left to interpret clause

I disagree, sorry.

> - we don’t need to solve this right now and we can always add this option later
> - without adding a third option, we are in the same position we have been in since the birth of the SPDX License List. incremental changes have always been our go-to strategy; let’s take a first step to clarify the current identifiers in a way that the FSF can get behind. If, for a later release, we think we need this third option, then we can discuss that further once we have some time under our belts with this change. 

No, this is the *reason* that there's a problem.  The *reason* that "GPL-2.0" isn't working is, in part, because it overloads two notions.  "GPL-2.0" is supposed to mean "Only 2.0" (per the spec) .  But tools only know "I saw a GPL-2.0 license", so how can they represent that information?  The obvious way is "GPL-2.0", so that same identifier can mean "2.0 at least, and I don't know if there are other versions allowed".  That's not good.

If we wait to "add this option later", "GPL-2.0-only" will probably have morphed in *practice* into "GPL-2.0 at least, and I don't know if it's the only version".  So while everyone can congratulate themselves about the clarity of the spec, very soon it will predictably be *unclear* in practice.  If we want to be able to express "exactly this version", we also need to be able to represent "at least this version".

--- David A. Wheeler

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