I'll take the action to document in this in the next rev of the
specification.
(see: https://bugs.linuxfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1327)

I'm thinking that an errata addendum may be appropriate for 2.0 to
captures this sort of thing.  Do folks want one created?

Kate

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 12:18 PM, J Lovejoy <[email protected]> wrote:

> I feel like we had this conversation before on this topic and David’s
> suggestion was raised, which I also agree with…. digging into meeting
> minutes I found:
>
> -
> http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Technical_Team/Minutes/2014-09-16#Case_sensitivity_for_license_information
> - the tech team discussed this on 16 Sept 2014, note saying “License ID’s
> case sensitive”
>
> - and then the legal team discussed it -
> http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Minutes/2014-09-18 - and concluded:
>         • Mark raised issue of whether SPDX License List short identifiers
> and (new) license expression operators should be case sensitive with the
> Tech Team and discussed further here: decided that for purposes of spec, in
> terms of a legitimate value, both could be case insensitive (but best
> practice would be to display with precise capitalization). Mark to go back
> to tech team with this decision.
>
> So… looks like maybe we didn’t really capture this elsewhere?  In any
> case, I don’t see a reason to have them be case sensitive in terms of
> matching (for tools), but have them display with the upper/lower case as
> they are shown in the SPDX License List - it’s easier for humans to
> read/spot :)
>
> What do we need to do to capture this and make any official changes?
>
> Jilayne
>
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 21:54:17 +0000
> > From: Ben Balter <[email protected]>
> > To: "Wheeler, David A" <[email protected]>,    "Gary O'Neall"
> >       <[email protected]>,       "[email protected]"
> >       <[email protected]>
> > Subject: Re: Are SPDX license identifiers case-sensitive?
> > Message-ID:
> >       <CANFb=ww9b9UCX-BCBdze=
> [email protected]>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> > Realize Licensee is just one implementation, but completely agree with
> > everything David just described (downcased matching, mixed cased
> display).
> >
> > - Ben
> >
> > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 4:44 PM Wheeler, David A <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >
> >> My personal preference would be that the license identifiers be
> **matched**
> >> by forcing everything to lower case, AND that SPDX encourage
> **displays**
> >> of a license identifier to use the exact mixed-case as shown in the SPDX
> >> lists.  The mixed-case forms use normal English conventions (all-caps
> for
> >> acronyms, initial caps for proper names), and it?s NICE to have a
> display
> >> that uses standard conventions.  However, requiring exact-case matching
> is
> >> a recipe for subtle mistakes; the actual matching should be
> >> case-insensitive, just like license expressions which use them are.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I note that the OSI website accepts both the exact-case and the
> >> all-lower-case versions of the SPDX license IDs. That?s why I say ?to
> lower
> >> case? instead of ?match ignoring case? ? in the case of URLs, you have
> to
> >> know EXACTLY what to transform it to before you can get matching
> ignoring
> >> case.  (I realize that in Greek there are 2 lower case s?s, but there
> are
> >> no license id?s with Greek letters and there IS a way to deal with that
> >> anyway, so that?s not relevant.)
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> The ?licensee? gem could reply with a new ?SPDX? field that returned the
> >> mixed-case string value, while doing lookups on all lower case.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --- David A. Wheeler
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
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