Technical Team/Use Cases/2.0/Low cost SPDX file

As a maintainer of an open source project i might be willing to create and maintain an SPDX file if it where simple and easy enough to do so. Maintaining data for each and every file in every package ever produced sounds like a lot of work because those files change a lot. I would like to give my users the information they need to comply with my licensing, though. An SPDX file that describes the package but omits all the file level information sounds just about right.

Stakeholders and interests

• Project maintainer

  Wants to produce machine readable licensing information so that users can more easily adopt the package but does not want to "waste" valuable time creating that data rather than implementing features.

• Lax SPDX consumer

  A person or organization that uses SPDX data to accomplish goals that do not require exhaustive file by file data.

• Strict SPDX consumer

  A person or organization that uses SPDX data to accomplish goals that require exhaustive data on every file.

Main scenario

1. Project maintainer hears about SPDX and decides to implement it for his project.
2. Project maintainer creates SPDX file that describes his package (name, description, licenseDeclared, licenseConcluded, checksum, etc) but does not included information about the files in package and does not generate packageVerificationCode.
3. Project maintainer publishes limited SPDX file along side the tar ball.
4. Lax SPDX consumer downloads tar ball and its SPDX file.
5. Lax SPDX consumer uses the package level licensing information to ensure they are in compliance with the licensing of the package.