License of test that tests SPDX ids?

[Miroslav Suchý]

I started packaging Cavil and I stumbled upon this gem

https://github.com/openSUSE/cavil/blob/master/t/legal-bot/error-invalid-xml-...

there are more like this.

It has a SPDX header that say it is MIT license. But it is just test whether Cavil can detect the SPDX header.

The code and project itself is GPL-2.0-only.

What is the license of that file? Is it GPL-2.0-only and we ignore the header because the meaning is just to test code 
and not declare license. Or we cannot ignore it and the license of that file is MIT?

[Petr Pisar]

V Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 03:27:23PM +0100, Miroslav Suchý napsal(a):
> I started packaging Cavil and I stumbled upon this gem
>
> https://github.com/openSUSE/cavil/blob/master/t/legal-bot/error-invalid-xml-...
>
> there are more like this.
>
> It has a SPDX header that say it is MIT license. But it is just test whether Cavil can detect the SPDX header.
>
> The code and project itself is GPL-2.0-only.
>
> What is the license of that file? Is it GPL-2.0-only and we ignore the
> header because the meaning is just to test code and not declare license. Or
> we cannot ignore it and the license of that file is MIT?

I think it depends on where the file comes from.

If it was written by Cavil project, then Cavil's license applies. Though
a nice remark explaining it a top-level COPYING file would be helpful.

If it was copied from somewhere else, then a license of the somewhere else
applies.

In other words, it depends whether the three lines are a genuine license
declaration, or just a string literal.

I have the same situation in libmodulemd. A previous maintainer copied real
files from a live Fedora system into a test suite. Because those files were
created by real people as part as their works, their copyright and license
terms apply.

-- Petr

[Richard Fontana]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 9:27 AM Miroslav Suchý  wrote:
> I started packaging Cavil and I stumbled upon this gem
>
> https://github.com/openSUSE/cavil/blob/master/t/legal-bot/error-invalid-xml-...
>
> there are more like this.
>
> It has a SPDX header that say it is MIT license. But it is just test whether Cavil can detect the SPDX header.
>
> The code and project itself is GPL-2.0-only.
>
> What is the license of that file? Is it GPL-2.0-only and we ignore the header because the meaning is just to test code
> and not declare license. Or we cannot ignore it and the license of that file is MIT?

I would assume this file is too trivial to be licensable.

Richard