Kate:

I'm unsure of any use case where you would want to mix NONE or
NOASSERTION with either simple-expression or compound-expression in
the same package. You may however want to use these strings when
packaging code that has no license or where you are unsure of the
license.

In ABNF speak was thinking more along the lines of

license-expression = 1*1(simple-expression / compound-expression /
"NONE" / "NOASSERTION")
--
#Terin Stock


On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Kate Stewart
<kstewart@...> wrote:

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