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Technical Team/Use Cases/2.0
From SPDX Wiki
We have several sources to begin pulling for SPDX Use Cases:
- The Pad from earlier conversations collected at <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/use-cases-collected-20-discussion">Use Cases For SPDX 2.0 Discussion</a>
- The old <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/spdx-use-case-1">SPDX 1.0 Use Cases</a> as well as the <a href="http://spdx.org/system/files/ecosystem.jpg">SDPX 1.0 Use Case Picture</a>.
I'd like to propose that we flesh out use cases here by having a brief summary listed here as a link to a more detailed child page. Note, these use cases should be *doable* but in general not *required*. Any item listed here that is not a link, should have a child page created for it.
- Code commits (original work intended for the project)
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/committers-provides-spdx-data-code-being-committed">Committer provides SPDX data</a>
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/contributor-makes-commit-subject-existing-spdx-data-project">Contributor makes commit subject to existing SPDX data of project</a>
- Contributor makes commit subject to existing SPDX data of a dual licensed project and selects one license
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/committer-annotates-source-files-spdx-data">Committer annotates source files with SPDX data</a>
- Patches (original work intended for the project)
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/patch-provider-provides-spdx-data-patch">Patch provider provides SPDX data for the patch</a>
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/patch-provider-provides-spdx-data-patch-indicating-it-licensed-however-hell-its-applied">Patch provider provides SPDX data for the patch indicating it is licensed however the hell its applied</a>
- Patch provider provides patch subject to existing SPDX data of project
- Patch provider provides a patch that modifies existing SPDX data of project
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/spdx-20-usecase-upstream-maintainer-providing-spdx-data">Upstream maintainer providing SPDX data</a>
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/upstream-maintainer-providing-spdx-data-source-archive">Upstream maintainer providing SPDX data in source archive</a>
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/upstream-maintainer-providing-spdx-data-scm">Upstream maintainer providing SPDX data in SCM</a>
- Upstream maintainer providing SPDX data at a URL
- Upstream maintainer preparing release artifacts (including SPDX data).
- Unaffiliated third party provides SPDX data for a project
- Project maintainer incorporates another project
- Project maintainer incorporates another project by including source
- Project maintainer incorporates another project by including binary
- Project maintainer incorporates another copyrightable artifact by reference (think maven, possibly linking cases)
- by static reference (the referenced library is included with a redistribution)
- by dynamic reference (express runtime dependency on the external library, but not redistributing it)
- Maven case
- Project maintainer pulling individual files out of another project (subsetting)
- Intermediate packager (rpm, deb, etc) passing on and adding to SPDX Data
- Intermediate packager builds source package from upstream source
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/intermediate-packager-builds-source-package-upstream-source-provides-spdx-data">Intermediate packager builds source package from upstream source that provides SPDX data</a>
- Intermediate packager builds source package from upstream source that does not provide SPDX data
- Intermediate packager builds binary package from upstream source
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/intermediate-packager-builds-binary-package-upstream-source-provides-spdx-data">Intermediate packager builds binary package from upstream source that provides SPDX data</a>
- Intermediate packager builds binary package from upstream source that does not provides SPDX data
- Intermediate packager adds patches to upstream source
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/intermediate-packager-adds-patches-upstream-source-provides-spdx-data">Intermediate packager adds patches to upstream source that provides SPDX data</a>
- Intermediate packager adds patches to upstream source that does not provide SPDX data
- Intermediate packager adds someone else's patches to upstream source
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/intermediate-packager-adds-someone-elses-patches-upstream-source-provides-spdx-data">Intermediate packager adds someone else's patches to upstream source that provides SPDX data</a>
- Intermediate packager adds someone else's patches to upstream source that does not provide SPDX data
- Intermediate packager subsetting upstream source
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/intermediate-packager-subsetting-upstream-source-provides-spdx-data">Intermediate packager subsetting upstream source that provides SPDX data</a>
- Intermediate packager subsetting upstream source that does not provide SPDX data
- Intermediate packager chooses to distribute one of multiple available under licenses provided for by upstream (check with legal team)
- Intermediate packager reviews SPDX data provided by upstream.
- Build systems (build systems want to pass on SPDX data for the thing they are building)
- Yocto [Jack Manbeck]
- How does SPDX work in an environment where the sources aren't there, but are pulled from git or a mirror and patched.
- Maven [ Brian Fox ]
- Rolling into release artifacts things only referenced in the POM file
- Shading (subsetting) portions of a transitive dependency for inclusion in your artifact
- Continuous integration around SPDX files (fixing SPDX files for commits coming in etc).
- Aggregator aggregating many 'copyrightable items' for redistribution
- Linux Distros [Kate Stewart]
- Embedded Images (e.g. router images, switch images)
- SDKs [Jack Manbeck]
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/spdx-20-usecase-reference-implementations">Reference implementations </a>[Jack Manbeck]
- Eclipse/OSGI distributions
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/spdx-20-usecase-application-which-ships-documentation-media-software">Application which ships with documentation + media + software</a> [Jack Manbeck]
- <a title="Use case details" href="http://spdx.org/wiki/application-which-ships-contrib-libraries">Application which ships with a contrib libraries</a> [Gary O'Neall]
- <a title="Use case details" href="http://spdx.org/wiki/application-which-ships-development-tools">Application which ships with development tools</a> [Gary O'Neall]
- Receiving what appears to be commercial software but that commercial software contains Open Source
- Receiving what appears to be opensource software but that opensource software contains commercial software
- Subsetting out only the shippable bits of stuff coming from an SDK
- Tool used to produce software infecting distribution license of the software itself [Kevin Fleming]
- Aggregators aggregating other aggregations for redistribution
- I just made a binary out of some source
- SPDX data indicating subset of the source that made it into a particular binary or binary package
- Asserting corrections to SPDX data provided by others further upstream
- Consumers receiving SPDX data
- Procurement needs to view it and review it
- Legal department needs to review
- Comply with licensing when there are multiple rights holders each with licensing use under a different license
- Bradley want to extract all rights holders for a particular file
- Multiple SPDX files you need to reconcile
- Recognizing the same SPDX data for the same code coming from multiple supply chain paths
- Incomplete SPDX data you may need to complete
- Flagging potential issues revealed by the SPDX
- License conflicts
- Listing out obligations
- Consuming code snippets (God help us all) (subfile pieces of code not originally intended for the project) [Gary O'Neall]
- Make sure that the license and copyright information for a snippet is reflected in the SPDX data for the file
- Track differently licensed snippets explicitely
- Handle the case where code is copied and pasted through online forums etc.
- Signoff/multiple signoff on SPDX data
- Contracts with multiple parties requiring signoff by all [Kate Stewart]
- Signing off on only a subset of the SPDX data (of an SPDX document in progress?)
- Auditor scenario: given big pile of 'copyrightable items', creating Bill of Materials [Peter Williams]
- Acceptable usage communicated by auditor [Peter Williams]
- Intended usage communicated by the auditee [Bill Schineller]
- Did the code that I shipped (the binaries) match the copyrightable items.
- <a href="http://spdx.org/wiki/collecting-enough-information-allow-auditor-make-recommendations-remove-or-not-component">Collecting enough information to allow auditor to make recommendations to remove or not a component</a>
- Sanity-checking Bill of Material
- outbound: validate that SPDX goes hand in hand with what's being shipped [Kirsten Newcomer]
- Check to see if the SPDX data provided matches the files provided [Kirsten Newcomer]
- Check to see if the SPDX file is internally consistent (do I have a license refs to match licenses)
- inbound: validate that SPDX goes hand in hand with what's being brought in [Kirsten Newcomer]
- Chcek to see if the SPDX data matches the files you are shipping [Kirsten Newcomer]
- Check to see if the SPDX file is internally consistent (do I have a license refs to match licenses)
- SPDX lint
- Java complications [Richard Fontana]
- What to do about installers that download JDK directly from sun.
- Tooling to assist with copyright registration for changes between versions
- Conveying Encryption content (Export Control implications) of a package/file in a package [someone at collab summit]
- Conveying Security Vulnerability information [Jianshen O.- Huawei]
- Linking
- Debian has an interest in only building things that are linking license compatible
- If a tool is consuming SPDX data to interact with heuristics.
- Migrating from one version of the SPDX spec to another (moving a file from SPDX 1.0 to 2.0 for example)
- Extensions:
- Communicate data beyond what is described in spec between consenting parties w/o breaking consumers that are not in the know [Peter Williams]
- Experimental improvements for new flavors data in SDPX files w/o breaking consumers that are not in the know. [Peter Williams]
- License list extensions, how do you handle folks who have more licenses than SPDX [Peter Williams]
- Decorating an already produces and signed SPDX dataset with extension data [Bill Schineller]
- SPDX-Lite:
- Allow a low investment SPDX producer to produce valid SPDX data
- Produce a valid SPDX dataset even if data is missing for some data we would like to
- Equivalence classes of binaries and tracking back to the same source and source SPDX data.
- Consider what to do about license metafiles
- COPYING files
- LICENSE.* files
- README.*
- Think about how to handle NOTICE files and Apache
- Helping to meet the obligations of the licenses
- How to capture attribution information for binaries
- Help with redistribution obligations
- Downstream consumers contributing patches to SPDX data to upstream.
- Look at a 'pingback' (URL string similar for blogs)kind of mechanism for original providers of SPDX (to allow them to figure out where it's used) [Andrew Hsu]
- Cloud
- Materializing a VM and making sure it's OK from a licensing mechanism
- SugarCRM case, obligation by virtue of using web service interface
- How are we going to handle Public Domain.
- Allow the NDA status of an SPDX document to be communicated in a machine readable way (not just a comment) for organizations that don't want the SPDX document to be publicly released [Mark Baushke from Juniper]
- Recording free-form tribal knowledge about a file which is not otherwise visible in the text of the file itself (e.g. commit history from git repo, origin information such as scanning against a knowledge base of open source could provide) [Mark Gisi]
- Recording per ExtractedLicenseText a comment detailing exactly which pattern matching technique / string found that Extracted License Text (so that SPDX file doesn't need to repeat in every matched File instance) [D. M. German]
Cross-cutting concerns:
- Provenance (the need to optionally use signing to validate who said what)
- Trust
- Handling staleness of data
- Composite licensing
- Ease of sharing information
- Collecting tribal knowledge along the way
- Guarding against file bloat
- Simple simple simple
- Clarity
- Automation/toolifiability
- Regionality
Themes:
Looking at these Use Cases, there are some underlying themes:
- Root of data (closer to upstream the better)
- Subsetting of copyrightable things (and their SPDX data) (Note: Subsets of copyrightable things are usually also copyrightable things)
- Aggregation of copyrightable things (and their SPDX data) (Note: Aggregations of copyrightable things are usually also copyrightable things).