> -----Original Message-----
> From: Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org <Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org> On Behalf Of via
> Lists.Spdx.Org
> Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2019 2:55 PM
> To: pombreda...@nexb.com; SPDX-legal <spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>
> Cc: Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org
> Subject: Re: [spdx-tech] An example of a super simple SPDX licenses registry,
> for
> discussion
> ...
...
> IMO the "ideal" here is that there is some automated way of "fingerprinting"
> license texts such that two parties, given more or less the same text, can
> independently come up with the same id. At that point you would not need a
> registry, just a shared algorithm. When/if eventually SPDX does recognize a
> given license and gives it a formal id, there could be a relatively simple
> aliasing
> step where SPDX id "SomeCoolLicense-1.0" is AKA "LicenseRef-43bdf298"
>
[G.O.] There are a few pieces of this in place. The SPDX legal team has
developed matching guidelines
(https://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines) and implemented a
template language to express variability in license text which agrees with the
matching guidelines
(https://spdx.org/spdx-specification-21-web-version#h.2mjng0vqrghe). There is
an implementation of these guidelines in an algorithm
(https://github.com/spdx/tools/blob/master/src/org/spdx/compare/LicenseCompareHelper.java).
Currently, when you submit a license, this algorithm is invoked and the
license you are submitted is compared to all approved licenses. This algorithm
is also used when we generate the HTML and data formats of the license.
There are a few inhibitors to realizing Jeff's "Ideal" solution. The solution
relies on templates expressed in the license XML. Not all licenses have the
templates fully implemented. If you compare licenses and expect a match and it
doesn't match, it likely is due to some missing templatization. Another
inhibitor is the algorithm is rather slow which prevents its use in broader
license scanning solutions. There are likely some bugs/improvements that can
be made as well.
Contributions are more than welcome to overcome these limitations. To improve
the license templates, contribute XML improvements to the LicenseList-XML repo:
https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md To
improve the algorithm, contribute to the SPDX tools repo:
https://github.com/spdx/tools/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
There are some good active discussions ongoing on improving the license
submittal process, but I'll leave comments on the process to the legal team
members.
Gary
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