Legal Team/Minutes/2017-11-09

Attendees

1) revisit the only/or later/? topic - see discussions from mailing list: https://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2017-November/thread.html The notes below includes key points, but not all the discussion:

John: issue with plain identifiers is if there is just a copy of license with no statement, then there’s statement in license itself that any version of GPL can be used; the copy of a version does not specify the version by itself. in response to Jilayne’s comparison to the license w/binary blob example (where the license would prevail with no other info needed in the “files”) - GPL is more specific, so not a comparison
tension in how license list is used and different fields in spec - info in file v. conclusion; and outside an SPDX document - need to address both/all
Trevor proposed enhancement to XML to flag error if use plain identifier (e.g., GPL0-2.0) which might only apply to conclusion fields
could also add/make NOASSERTION as something that can be used as part of license list/expressions (not just within the spec/SPDX docs) - this would be helpful for more than this scenario.
current proposal is easier for tooling and also leaves room for extensibility or other operators (discussion of how proxy clause would work, for example)

Net sum of call: possible proposals, all of which accommodate 3 options:

1a) “Gary’s proposal” (same one as we’ve been talking about since beginning of this discussion):

keep plain identifiers on license list (remove the word “only” in full name); add “only” operator; provide documentation that the plain identifier is meant to be used in the instance to show you found the text of that license

1b) “operator metadata proposal”

Like “Gary's proposal”, but add compatibleWith… metadata so we can warn in tooling and on the license list that a bare GPL-2.0 is ambiguous and that valid license-expressions SHOULD (and later, with SPDX 3.0, MUST) supply a versioning operator. In this case, the “license text but no grant” case would be require an explicit AMBIGUOUS or OR-MAYBE operator.

2) “Paul’s alternative proposal: provide 3 “hard-coded” options on the license list as follows:

change current GPL-2.0 to GPL-2.0-only
add GPL-2.0-or-later
add GPL-2.0-text-alone (or something along those lines) to be used in the instance to show you found the text of that license)

Note: the use of people’s names is only to attribute who initiated the idea and aide in referring to the proposals :)

Need to carry on discussion of next release preparations, as well as this topic on mailing list.

Note: next call falls on Thanksgiving, so we will use tech team’s call time on Tuesday, Nov to carry on discuss so too much time does not pass!