[Fedora-legal-list] [RFC] Switching to SPDX in license tags

[Richard Fontana]

On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 03:22:41PM +0200, Haïkel wrote:
> 2015-07-09 15:17 GMT+02:00 Miro Hrončok <mhroncok at redhat.com>:
> > On 9.7.2015 14:48, Haïkel wrote:
> >> * mass changing all specs => could be automated
> >
> > Actually, openSUSE has a tool for this:
> >
> > https://github.com/openSUSE/spec-cleaner
> >
> > It can convert their old license abbrevs to SPDX, I don't know if we are
> > using the same ones, but the data set can be changed of course.

The point I made earlier (wasn't posted to devel@) was that the SPDX
abbreviations are not equivalents of the abbreviations in use by
Fedora. "MIT" is used in Fedora and in SPDX, but they do not mean the
same thing. "MPLv1.1" in Fedora is not equivalent to "MPL-1.0" or
whatever in SPDX. So what is the point of adopting a different
abbreviation system if the meaning of the underlying referenced things
or concepts is not the same? 

One answer might be that Fedora should radically alter its
longstanding approach to license abbreviations in such a way that use
of the SPDX abbreviations would actually make sense. Is there really
any interest in doing that though?

Now, if there is already in the larger world a layer of confusion over
how the SPDX abbreviations are being used (as I'm beginning to think
there may be), perhaps that weakens my concern, but then I don't see
the compelling argument to shift to a different abbreviation
system. Better for all the main community distros to get together and
create their own standardized abbreviation system, suitable for
distros rather than commercial compliance product vendors which are
the entities that appear to be mainly driving the SPDX effort.

Richard