Re: remove recommendation re: standard license headers


Warner Losh
 



On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 1:41 PM Sebastian Crane <seabass-labrax@...> wrote:
Dear Jilayne,

> Now that SPDX ids are used more widely and we know a bit more about
> how scanning tools identify license headers in total - I think we can
> remove this section altogether. I don't think SPDX needs to make a
> statement either way and projects can make their own call, as we've
> seen with the Linux kernal and other projects.

I'd completely agree with your appraisal here. Personally, I prefer to
use just the SPDX license headers. I imagine that, in some cases, having
both could be confusing - for example, if someone copied the standard
license header for the GPLv3 "or (at your option) any later version",
but also wrote SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only at the top of the
file. Of course, if anyone does want to use both, the standard license
header text will still be on the SPDX License List website.

Perhaps we should recommend that any policy about the license marking
of files should address this. FreeBSD's policy will likely state that the
actual boiler plate license text in the file is controlling when both are present
and the SPDX-License-Identifier doesn't match the prose grant.

Warner

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