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

[Tom Callaway]

On 07/09/2015 09:14 AM, Haïkel wrote:
> Currently Suse is using it, they even patched their packaging compliance
> checkers to support it.

Well, no, actually, they're not. They're using the matching identifiers.

I'm hesitant to go down this road for a number of reasons:

1) It's a LOT of change for very little benefit. We're talking about
changing practically every single spec.
2) We simplify license tags in Fedora. We call a lot of functionally
identical licenses BSD and MIT, which the SPDX model insists are unique
and different licenses. We'd have to stop doing that.
3) Every exception will need a new SPDX tag, we can't just use "GPLv2
with exceptions" anymore
4) Every firmware license will need to be listed explicitly.
5) It implies that we're planning on implementing the full SPDX
specification. And we're not.

For those reasons, I'd vote no on this.

~tom

==
Red Hat