[Fedora-legal-list] process for review of licenses

[Jilayne Lovejoy]

Hi all,

As you all know, we have a larger project of moving Fedora license data 
to a data format and repository, updating and improving Fedora-legal 
documentation related to licensing, and adoption of SPDX ids. In light 
of that, it is also relevant to look at the process for review of a new 
license for potential inclusion in Fedora.

I'd describe the past/current process as:
- send email to this list, some discussion may ensue on list (with 
community members and Red Hat legal), decision made and then license is 
added to the applicable wiki table (good or bad) at 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing
- Of course, up until somewhat recently, this entire workflow was 
shepherded by Tom Callaway

Now that we have the license data in a repository, it seems like we can 
use Issues and Merge Requests for the process flow, instead of relying 
on email. As such, I'd like to propose something along the following lines:

*
**How to request review of a new license*
If you find a license for a package you want to include in Fedora and 
that license is not listed in the Fedora License Data, you can submit it 
for review as follows:

Note: you must be a Fedora contributer and become part of the Fedora 
Gitlab group. See LINK for more on how to become a Fedora contributor.

1) Create a new issue in the Fedora License Data repo with the following 
information: license name, link to text of license, package name and 
link, why you want to include it in Fedora, whether it is on the SPDX 
License List, and the SPDX expression as applicable (see below for hints 
on determining if a license text matches a license on the SPDX License List)

2) All discussion related to the license review based on the license 
criteria will be on the Issue thread and a decision will be noted there.
` If the license is not on the SPDX License List, then submit the 
license to the to the SPDX-legal team at 
https://tools.spdx.org/app/submit_new_license/. In addition to the 
required information, include a note that it is under review for Fedora 
and a link to the related Fedora License Data Gitlab issue.
The ultimate decision for licenses allowed or not-allowed for Fedora 
based upon the license criteria rests with Red Hat legal.

3) Once a decision has been made, the person who submitted the license 
for review creates a Merge Request for the license using the TOML file 
format.

4) Merge Requests will be reviewed and merged by the Fedora License Data 
repo maintainers.


Happy to hear your thoughts, feedback, and suggestions!

Thanks,
Jilayne