Phil Odence:

> And, also, bear in mind that SPDX can handle any license. Worst case, you identify a local license identifier and include the license. The goal of the license list is to minimize the need to do that, but at the same time, this keeps the list from being a constraint.

For those people who are using the entire SPDX file format, that’s absolutely true.

For those who are *only* using SPDX License Expressions within a larger context (e.g., within a package specification), that doesn’t work.  MANY people use ONLY the SPDX license expressions.

Having predefined license ids (for common licenses & licenses for common software) is really valuable, but it’s especially important for this oft-occurring situation.

--- David A. Wheeler