Legal Team/Minutes/2012-05-30

SPDX Legal Team Meeting Minutes - 30 May 2012

Attendees:

• Mark Gisi
• Adam Cohn
• Jason Buttura 
• Michael Herzog
• Tom Incorvia
• Peter Williams
• Paul Madick
• Karen Copenhaver
• Esteban Rockett
• Kate Stewart

Agenda:

1)  finalize Legal work group description and SPDX License List description – revised text from last call below:

Legal Work Group description:

"The SPDX Legal Team supports and provides recommendations to the SPDX working groups regarding licensing issues for the specification itself; maintains the SPDX License List; and promotes the SPDX specification to the legal community at-large."

 SPDX License List description:

"The SPDX License List is a list of commonly found open source software licenses for the purposes of being able to easily and efficiently identify such licenses in an SPDX document. The SPDX License List includes a standardized short identifier, full name for each license, vetted license text, other basic information, and a canonical permanent URL. By providing a short identifier, users can efficiently refer to a license without having to redundantly reproduce the full license." 

• send to general list for final review (both)
• send to License List description to Kate to include in the Spec (name needs to be updated there in Appendix)
• we currently don't have version number for license list prominently placed in Spec itself or on license list webpage
• should specification have full list (which will get outdated) or just a sample?
• what if someone doesn't have connectivity, if license list doesn't ever get smaller, then at least the short identifiers are still there in paper format to be used
• should the spec indicate which version of the license list? (no use case for that right now, so if so, then we need to add)
• we need to assert that a short name never gets removed, maybe a function to deprecate; but need flexibility due to youth of project 
• should have date and version number on actual license webpage - NEED TO UPDATE
• as for spec itself: full list; link only; link only with an example of one license
• keep full list as is, but add version and date info (and update name) to reflect same as webpage, etc. - NEED TO UPDATE
• should also add link for downloadable version on license list page there as well - NEED TO UPDATE

2) Website refresh update from Mark?

• License List not moved over - Gary needs to do that
• moved all old stuff over
• a couple new sections not there

3) To-do list – prioritization

• looked over list, nothing to add, will update this list on-going after each call, every couple weeks 
• re: last item in terms of best practices - problem with this is that this may conflict with other best practices individuals have. over time, tolerance grows, so should say we are not going to do it, but other things on list that are low hanging fruit, but not what we are doing right now
• good to have on list, but more future goal

4) License List Matching Guidelines update - quick review of what we decided on and where we left off

• "copyright holder" and "copyright owner" - equivalency question.  when last discussed, Karen suggested to get global, legal perspective.  Email sent to FSFE Legal Network, and got response from lawyers from multiple countries all confirming that these terms could be used interchangeably.
• decided to simply add to "varietal word spelling" list (instead of a separate guideline) since it's two terms - DONE
• discussion to use this list for other such scenarios, not just variations on spelling, so long as the word or phrase is short enough (e.g. two words or less)

5) LOOK AT USE CASE LIST! (and graveyard list) to familiarize with what made the list and what got left out to make sure legal use cases are covered