Legal Team/Current Projects and Issues-2016

SPDX Legal Team projects for 2016

Licenses Under Review

• Owner: Dennis Clark
• Timeframe: On-going
• New license or exception requests are tracked here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11AKxLBoN_VXM32OmDTk2hKeYExKzsnPjAVM7rLstQ8s/edit?pli=1#gid=695212681
• Licenses "on hold" - various licenses on hold, try to clear them to a decision point:
  • Open Game License v1.0a - discussed http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Minutes/2015-12-10 - needs more research (Alan Tse volunteered to do so)
  • Open Government Licence v3.0 - need more info from person who submitted it re: older versions; mark for re-review and need someone to reach out to submitter, Mike Linsvayer (WHO?)
  • W3C Document Notice and License (2 versions) - documentation/specification license, delayed decision. need to re-assess (WHO?)
  • OCaml linking exception - on hold waiting for more info http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-July/001465.html. need to reach out to Camille to see if he has found out anything further (WHO?)
  • various other exceptions on "waiting list" - see spreadsheet. Need someone to research, as needed and lead discussion for these (WHO?)

Update & Maintain SPDX License List

• Owner: Jilayne Lovejoy
• Timeframe: On-going
• Add new licenses or make other changes to SPDX License List. Push changes to Git repository and coordinate with Gary to make sure new versions are tagged and uploaded to spdx.org
• SPDX License List releases to follow quarterly schedule unless no changes or compelling reason to release sooner.
• Make updates to description on spdx.org/licenses, and all other key pages (e.g., items in bulleted list there).

Other Licenses or License List related issues

• License exception or note on license interpretation? - Sam Ellis requested to add this as an exception: http://repo.gem5.org/gem5/file/021524c21cbc/src/cpu/exec_context.cc and comment from Oliver that this is similar to Linus' note re: derived work in kernel. Are these exceptions or clarifications of the interpretation of the license itself? Either way, how does SPDX want to handle them?
• Jabber Open Source License v1.0 - archived text here (http://archive.jabber.org/core/JOSL.pdf) is not the same as the OSI has on their site (it was OSI approved). What do we do about this? need to resolve with OSI (with goal of having on list b/c it was OSI approved and we endeavored to have all OSI licenses on SPDX list, even if old). license text also can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/jabber-net/wiki/FAQ_License
• Composite Licenses - some licenses currently on the SPDX License List are actually composite licenses or license stacks; should these be broken apart and the SPDX License Expression used? Some discussion on this issue took place in 2015 (but decided to wait until after 2.0 release). See: http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Minutes/2015-01-08
• Standard Headers with "or later" delineation - where the determination as to whether a specific license version or the "or later version" applies is made via a standard header, how does 2.0 with license expression and + operator capture this, in terms of matching, etc.

Improving License Matching Markup / Move Maintenance of SPDX License List to Github

• Owner:
• Timeframe:
• Joint discussion of legal and tech teams as to whether matching markup can be improved. Proposal for change provided by Kris
• previous points of discussion, see http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Templatizing for an overview and various related links from there
  • http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Minutes/2015-12-10