Legal Team/Minutes/2013-04-11

Attendees

• Jilayne Lovejoy, OpenLogic
• Tom Incorvia, Incorvia
• Dennis Clark, NexB
• Jack Manbeck, TI
• Zac White, Entente
• Paul Madick, HP
• Phil Odence, Black Duck
• Tom Vidal, Abrams Garfinkel Margolis Bergson

Public Domain explanation page

see http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Decisions/Dealing_with_Public_Domain_within_SPDX_Files_(DRAFT)) updated to reflect Jason Buttara's excellent revisions and one small edit by Jilayne in last paragraph. All on call agreed it looked good, so will be considered done once updated with proper links and reference to spec

Approve final text for SPDX License List Overview page:

please see draft here: http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/License_List/Overview_and_License_Inclusion_Guidelines_(draft_for_review)

• call for comments/feedback on the general list and meeting last week resulted in only a few tweaks as follows:
  • Somewhere early on, probably in the background, we should make a parenthetical statement to the effect that the standard is able to handle any license, it doesn't have to be on the list. It's just more convenient if it is.
    • all on call agreed, sentence to this effect added to end of second paragraph
  • whack the para that starts "Although SPDX…" Seems to me the next para handles the issue.
    • all on call agreed that having this paragraph was helpful and cutting it didn't save that much space, so left it in
  • This seems too strong: "Because the present focus of SPDX is the collection and presentation of the open-source software licenses contained in a software package, any license that is a candidate for inclusion on the SPDX License List must be an "open source" license. maybe: "…must have the attributes of an OSS license" or "…must be OSS-like…" or "…must be characterized as an…"
    • changed to "must have the attributes of an open source license"
    • changes will be made, page posted on official site and the draft page on the wiki will go away

license list issues that came up as Jilayne went to update and release v1.18:

A) license list language issue (all licenses on list are in native language with links to other official translations. License for which this is an issue are "Cecill, EUPL. and now, the German Public License

• discussed that this dovetails with license matching guidelines - should official translations be considered equivalent and hence only need one short identifier for the license or should we have each translation as a separately listed license with it's own short identifier?
• have there been any claims or issues related to translations? not that anyone knows of...
  • decided to leave as is, that is with license text included for native language and links to official translations in the note field. therefore for German Public License, will use the German full name and text for purposes of the License List; slight update to license overview description of fields to make sure this is explained there
    • good issue to add to list for license matching guidelines discussion next week at Collab Summit

B) MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License - had decided to add (old license that is OSI approved) but the license text itself includes its own 6 clauses plus the text of the GPL and the text of the MPL with a choice of either.

• should license text for matching purposes only be the 6 clauses, as whatever license (GPL or MPL) is chosen would/should be indicated with the short identifier for those licenses?
• talked through how this might work within an SPDX document, the SPDX License List, and the license matching guidelines...
  • decided in spirit of releasing v1.18 of the license list and not making a hurried decision on this topic, which could impact the way other similar licenses are dealt with, to leave license off list for now and also discuss issue at license matching guideline meeting next week.