1. Messages
  2. Exclusion of NONE and NOASSERTION from ABNF

Re: Exclusion of NONE and NOASSERTION from ABNF

Kate Stewart
 

Hi Terin,

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 10:52 AM, Terin Stock <terinjokes@...> wrote:
The ABNF in Appendix IV of the 2.0 version of the specification allows for short form identifiers, LicenseRef values or combinations to form a license-expression. However the values "NONE" and "NOASSERTION" are not valid in a license expression, despite their useful and defined meaning in the specification.

There are tools that validate their license fields using a license-expression (two such tools being the package managers npm and composer, in JavaScript and PHP, respectfully), making the values "NONE" and "NOASSERTION" invalid.

Are these two values excluded from the ABNF on purpose?

Can you give us a real life use case where either "NONE" or "NOASSERTION" should be used in combination with other licenses?   

If there's a compelling use case as to why it should be allowed, that can't be expressed another way, we can certainly revisit adding it to the specification if the folk on the legal team agree. 
 
Thanks,  Kate
Join {spdx@lists.spdx.org to automatically receive all group messages.