Hi Luis, hope you (and others) are staying safe and healthy as well.

Echoing Kyle, "LicenseRef-" is part of the spec syntax and is defined in Appendix IV of the spec. [1] In an actual SPDX document, it would be defined in a corresponding "Other License" section. [2]

In the v2.2 release of the spec (for which a release candidate was circulated this morning), the spec now explicitly clarifies that LicenseRefs can be used in short-form identifiers in source code. [3] REUSE has also implemented this in their spec and described a mechanism for including the corresponding license text directly in a repo.

Hope this helps!

Steve

(links below are to sections of the v2.2 release candidate)

[1] https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2-draft/appendix-IV-SPDX-license-expressions/

[2] https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2-draft/6-other-licensing-information-detected/

[3] https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2-draft/appendix-V-using-SPDX-short-identifiers-in-source-files/, scroll to the bottom

[4] https://reuse.software/spec/, search for "LicenseRef"

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 12:39 PM Kyle Mitchell <kyle@...> wrote:

Luis,

`LicenseRef-*` is technically part of the license expression
syntax, too.  But it mostly comes up in the context of
(private, shared) SPDX XML files.  I'm not aware of any
package managers that leverage it as a way for package
authors to express their own license terms.

--
Kyle Mitchell, attorney // Oakland // (510) 712 - 0933

--

Steve Winslow
Director of Strategic Programs
The Linux Foundation

swinslow@...