Hi SPDX-legal
Some time ago, I raised the issue of the possibility of finding a
proliferation of "public domain "dedication" texts in the course of
Fedora reviewing package license info to adopt SPDX ids. Please see
https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-legal/topic/93048752#3202 for the background
Fedora has been "collecting" such texts here
https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/blob/main/public-do...
and using a specific LicenseRef-Fedora-Public-Domain as a sort of
placeholder SPDX id.
The idea being, no assessment of how many of these types of dedications
exist has been collected in one place in order for the SPDX-legal
community to assess.
I estimate that Fedora has collected about 48 variations of public
domain statements that are not specifically identified on the SPDX
License List. I'm going to assume many of these packages also show up
in other major distros.
I'd like to raise the conversation as to:
1) Should each unique entry be added to the SPDX License List as a
standalone entry (like normal, in that one SPDX license id represents a
specific, identifiable license/set of text)?
2) Should SPDX consider a different approach by defining one SPDX id to
represent any one of a collection of specifically identified and vetted
texts?
I'd love to hear your yes or no answer to these questions and why you
answered as such :)
Also see for background:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/update-existing-packages/#_upd...
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/update-existing-packages/#_pub...
We likely won't have time to discuss this on Thursday's call, but I
wanted to start the discussion here and perhaps we can dedicate some
time at an upcoming meeting.
Thanks,
Jilayne
(copying Fedora-legal for awareness)