Legal Team/Minutes/2015-12-10

Attendees

• Jilayne Lovejoy
• Kate Stewart
• Dennis Clark
• Alan Tse
• Brad Edmundson

Agenda

1) v2.3 items: a) do we need matching guidelines markup for the new licenses added on the last call?

• curl License - no markup needed
• Info-ZIP - very specific license to Info-ZIP w/names, etc. - no markup
• Open CASCADE Technology Public License - no markup needed, specific to project
• Open CASCADE exception - no markup needed
• also checked names and short identifiers on all

b) Open Game License is marked as "on hold" - do we have a reason for that?

• Looked at again, and have hard time determining what it is covering (doesn't seem like software or documentation license) needs further input from someone with gaming knowledge - Alan to have a look

c) Sam Ellis' request 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?

• need more discussion, and community view - will put on agenda for New Year

d) add markup to TCL? http://spdx.org/licenses/TCL.html is not exactly the same as is on the website: http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/license.html the *only* difference is just in “ActiveState corporation” being added in the list of copyright holders/parties.

• yes, add markup for name

e) add markup around the names in Plexus http://spdx.org/licenses/Plexus.html - dom4j uses the same license, but for the names and this is a common project, so it would make sense to be able to match on the substantive text, instead of using a LicenseRef for dom4j. See dom4j license here: http://sourceforge.net/p/dom4j/code/ci/default/tree/LICENSE.txt

• yes, add markup (and remove line at top)

f) JSON file format for SPDX proposal - did this get done? any more info needed?

• just needed a yes,

2) Schedule:

• no call on Dec 24th - next call will be Jan 7th
• is there any desire to change the call time for 2016? (would an hour earlier help those in Europe?)
  • everyone on call was fine either way; but recommendation to reach out to Paul and Mark on west coast, and Oliver for European time

3) What do we want to accomplish in 2016?

• start thinking about initiatives for 2016 to bring to discussion/planning on Jan 7th! Bit of brainstorming on this call came up with:
  • improving license markup/templatizing (Kris' proposal) & possible move of SPDX License List to more "contribution-friendly" infrastructure (e.g., Github) should be number 1 priority for 2016
    • include in this an improved way to request a new license to make process more efficient and easily visible, which may also encourage more input from outside the group. Could create a Google form that feeds info into the current Google spreadsheet (thus reduces a couple steps over current process)
  • double back on old license requests that have stalled due to needing more info
  • see other items above here

HAPPY HOLIDAY EVERYONE!!