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Re: Exclusion of NONE and NOASSERTION from ABNF

Kate Stewart
 

Hi Terin

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Terin Stock <terinjokes@...> wrote:
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.

Neither could we.  :-)
 
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")

Ah yes, that should be considered. 

Right now when NONE or NOASSERTION are permitted, they are associated
with the actual fields in the specification (ie. LicenseConcluded, etc.) , but this 
may be a more elegant way to express it.   Will need to take a pass through all
the other fields using them and see if there are any snags.

The next tech call on the 16th is a joint call with the legal team where we
plan on talking about the NONE/NOASSERTION language.   It probably makes
sense to consider this, as well at that time.    Please feel free to join in to the 
call if you'd like. 

Thanks for raising this.

Kate
 
--
#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
>
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