Tech Reports

Program Overview

The objective of the SPDX Tech Report program is to create a repository of articles to capture and share community knowledge about everything and anything SPDX. This knowledge base covers a diverse collection of topics including (but not limited to): technical issues, best practices, relevant legal topics, tool proposals, adoption strategies and analysis, license compliance considerations, position papers and so forth. Periodically one of the SPDX working groups may select an article for publication on the SPDX website (spdx.org).

Publication Checklist

1. For consideration author(s) need to publish their work under one of the following Creative Common Licenses:
   • Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND - This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the author(s). See:
   • Attribution CC BY - This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as they credit the author(s) for the original creation. See:
   • Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA - This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author(s) and license their new creations under the identical terms. See:
2. Author(s) should submit an abstract to: press@spdx.org.
3. The SPDX Business Working Group will review the abstract proposal at an upcoming reoccurring bi-weekly meeting.
4. The author(s) will be informed via email if their proposal was accepted or rejected. If accepted the author(s) will be given a deadline for final submission.
5. If the final draft is received by the designated deadline in .docx format, it will be reviewed in its entirety by at least two reviewers. It will either be accepted or sent back to the author(s) for revision. This process repeats itself until the report is either formally accepted by both reviewers, rejected by at least one reviewer or withdrawn by the author(s).
6. Once a report is accepted for publication:
   • The report will be assigned a unique tech report number (e.g., SPDX TR 2013-004)
   • Formatted using the standard SPDX tech report template
   • Entered into the SPDX tech report database
   • Announcement is made to the SPDX general list about the reports availability along with the abstract and a link.
7. Periodically an SPDX working group may select certain reports for publication on the main website spdx.org.

Peer Review Criteria

• Must be reviewed by at least one member from each of the three working groups (Technical, Legal and Business).
• At least 50% of the reviewers approve.
• Author(s) of the article cannot be reviewers.
• The following review criteria includes:
  • The content is relevant to the SPDX community
  • The content is easy to understand (sufficiently well written)
  • No obvious grammar or spelling mistakes present
  • It has been formatted using the SPDX tech report template and all the major sections have been include (where applicable). For example, includes an Abstract, Introduction, Main Content, Summary, References and About Author sections.
  • Appropriate disclaimers are included (e.g., not legal advice, not necessary opinions of the SPDX project or the Linux Foundation).
  • There is no length requirement.

Tech Report Queue

TR #	Topic	Status	Who	Date Submitted	Comments
	File License Tagging Best Practices	Seeking Proposal		2013-10-03
	Generating SPDX Data Best Practices	Seeking Proposal		2013-10-03
2013-0001	Benefits of Boolean Expressions for Representing Licensing	Under Review	Mark Gisi	2013-10-10	Position Paper

For Assistance

If you would like to learn more about the SPDX Tech Publication program, provide feedback on the current process or make recommendation on how to improve the process contact:

spdx-press@spdx.org