Based on discussions on the SPDX call today, I think we are closing in on the following proposal for the file level to address the concerns raised by Open Logic.

There will be a special call tomorrow at 9am EST to get resolution on this issue.  Please let Esteban Rockett or myself know,  off-list, if you are interested in participating and were not in the legal call yesterday or the coordination call today.

Proposal:  section 5.3 (License(s)) of the spec will become 3 fields:

5.3a Asserted License

5.3a.1 Purpose: This field contains the license governing the file if it can be determined.  If no license information can be determined, the license is denoted as “Unknown”.   The licenses should use the standard short form names.   See Appendix I for standardized license short forms.  If a Detected License is not one of the standardized license short forms, this field must contain a reference to the full licenses text included in this SPDX file in section 4.  If more than one license is detected in the file, then each should be listed.  If any of the detected licenses offer the recipient a choice of licenses, then each of the choices will be declared as a “disjunctive” license.

5.3a.2 Intent: Here, the intent is to have a uniform method to refer to the license that is determined to represent the file with specificity to eliminate any license confusion.  For example, the 3 clause BSD would have a different license identifier then the 4 clause BSD.

5.3a.3 Cardinality:  Mandatory, one.

5.3a.4 Tag: "LicenseAsserted:"

5.3a.5 RDF: TBD  (include Disjunctive form here)

5.3a.6 Data Format: <short form identifier in Appendix I> | "FullLicense"-N

5.3a.7 Example:
LicenseAsserted: GPL-2.0


5.3b Detected License(s)

5.3b.1 Purpose: This field contains the license governing the file if it is known.  It will be explicit from the file header or other information found in the file’s source code.    If no license information is found it should be denoted as “NotSpecified”.  If no license information can be determined, the license is denoted as “Unknown”.   The licenses should use the standard short form names.   See Appendix I for standardized license short forms.  If a Detected License is not one of the standardized license short forms, this field must contain a reference to the full licenses text included in this SPDX file in section 4.  If more than one license is detected in the file, then each should be listed.  If any of the detected licenses offer the recipient a choice of licenses, then each of the choices will be declared as a “disjunctive” license.

5.ba.2 Intent: Here, the intent is to have a uniform method to refer to each license with specificity to eliminate any license confusion.  For example, the 3 clause BSD would have a different license identifier then the 4 clause BSD.

5.3b.3 Cardinality:  Mandatory, one or many.

5.3b.4 Tag: "LicenseDetected:"

5.3b.5 RDF: TBD (not including disjunctive form, if multiple many should be specified )

5.3b.6 Data Format: <short form identifier in Appendix I> | "FullLicense"-N

5.3b.7 Example:
LicenseDetected: GPL-2.0
LicenseDetected: FullLicense-2


5.3c License Comments

5.3c.1 Purpose: This field is a detailed description of the analysis and any relevent background references that went in to making the asserted license for a file, if the asserted license does not match the detected license that the person creating the SPDX file wants to share with the reviewers.

5.3c.2 Intent:  Here, the intent is to provide technical readers/reviewers with a detailed technical explanation of how the asserted license was determined if it does not match the detected license.

5.3c.3 Cardinality: Optional, single instance

5.3c.4 Tag: “LicenseComments:”

5.3c.5 RDF: TBD

5.3c.6 Data Format: free form text than can span multiple lines, preceded with <text> and ending with </text>.

5.3c.7 Example: LicenseComments: <text> The asserted license was taken from the package level that the file was included in.  </text>

The above is preliminary at this point, so needs some polishing.  I've entered it in bugzilla (http://bugs.linux-foundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=625), so after the discussion tomorrow, feel free to subscribe, and make improvements there.

Kate
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