Philippe Ombredanne <[email protected]>: > This "+" aka. "or later" operator is indeed in need for a fix. The fix we > need is retirement, not expansion. It has served its purpose and is no longer > needed IMHO.
I think that's a bad decision. That means that the next time someone fixes a license version number, then SPDX will have to add yet another arbitrary fixed license id. > It has now been replaced mostly by concrete licenses with their own ids. No, a few cases have been sort-of handled by special casing license ids. > If there is anything we could fix that would be to check if there are **any** > license that would need such a variation. I do not known of any that is in > any kind of usage, even rare usage. MPLs, CPLs and EPLs do not have such > variation (they always allow any other version AFAIK). All the FSF licenses > have been taken care of. So I do not think there is anything left. It's hard to predict the future. Even in the present, I don't know of anyone who's seriously studied this issue to make such a confident claim. "The always allow any other version" is merely a statement about the text of the license itself. That does not guarantee that the USERS of such licenses actually permit this. > This + seems to be now only a source of bloat and rightful confusion. It's not confusing, and the "+" long predates the SPDX specification. It's not *specified* in the current spec, but that's not the same thing. What's more, the SPDX specification still doesn't deal with the OTHER problem I've mentioned before: "I don't know if 'or later' applies". Trying to use fixed license names, when you DO NOT and CANNOT have this information, is misleading. We still need 3 cases: 1. Only this version 2. This version or later 3. This version at least, and maybe other versions (but we don't know). Having fixed names for licenses means that you cannot clearly express much of that. The result is a muddle. --- David A. Wheeler -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#3741): https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-tech/message/3741 Mute This Topic: https://lists.spdx.org/mt/32049933/21656 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-tech/unsub [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
