Hi SPDX-legal
Some time ago, I raised the issue of the possibility of finding a proliferation of "public domain "dedication" texts in the course of Fedora reviewing package license info to adopt SPDX ids. Please see https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-legal/topic/93048752#3202 for the background
Fedora has been "collecting" such texts here https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/blob/main/public-domai...
and using a specific LicenseRef-Fedora-Public-Domain as a sort of placeholder SPDX id.
The idea being, no assessment of how many of these types of dedications exist has been collected in one place in order for the SPDX-legal community to assess.
I estimate that Fedora has collected about 48 variations of public domain statements that are not specifically identified on the SPDX License List. I'm going to assume many of these packages also show up in other major distros.
I'd like to raise the conversation as to: 1) Should each unique entry be added to the SPDX License List as a standalone entry (like normal, in that one SPDX license id represents a specific, identifiable license/set of text)? 2) Should SPDX consider a different approach by defining one SPDX id to represent any one of a collection of specifically identified and vetted texts?
I'd love to hear your yes or no answer to these questions and why you answered as such :)
Also see for background: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/update-existing-packages/#_updati... https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/update-existing-packages/#_public...
We likely won't have time to discuss this on Thursday's call, but I wanted to start the discussion here and perhaps we can dedicate some time at an upcoming meeting.
Thanks, Jilayne
(copying Fedora-legal for awareness)
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Jilayne Lovejoy