[Fedora-legal-list] license-tag purpose/goal (Was: Re: SPDX Statistics - R.U.R. edition)
Hi Richard,
On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 08:07:02PM +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > Is this really a problem? Could you show an example where
an upstream
> > or package maintainer stated in the license tag that the effective
> > license was say "GPLv3+", but it would have been more
"correct" to state
> > that it was "GPL-3.0-or-later AND GPL-3.0-or-later WITH
> > Autoconf-exception-generic-3.0 AND GPL-3.0-or-later WITH
> > Bison-exception-2.2 AND GPL-2.0-or-later AND GPL-2.0-or-later WITH
> > Autoconf-exception-generic AND LGPL-2.1-or-later AND LGPL-2.0-or-later
> > AND X11"?
>
> I will not argue this, but I will make two observations. One is
> something I've said before, which is that people seem to be
> complaining about the current standards for license tags only when
> they are lengthy. I think it would be more consistent to argue that we
> don't need license tags at all. I have no attachment to RPM-style
> license tags, though Red Hat finds them marginally useful for some
> purposes.
What are the purposes for which Red Hat finds the spec license tags
useful?
I am still interested in this because I think it will help people
understand why they are doing all this work.
I am slightly surprised Red Hat (and Fedora) finds the SPDX
indetifiers as license tags/expression language useful. I thought that
making sure the company/project always complies with, and makes sure
that all users can easily comply with, the licenses by distributing
the complete, corresponding source code and build scripts (in the
srpm) is way simpler and effective.
Cheers,
Mark