[adding spdx-legal list] Hi Peter,
Can you give a couple of examples of what kind of metadata you're talking about? I admit that reading that adding these "would likely face resistance from the legal team" makes me worry a little... I mean, the Legal Team is by definition the people who know best what has to be in license data... (and there has been plenty of extra information added in these data over the years). But maybe it's something I don't understand. -- zvr -- ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Peter Monks via lists.spdx.org <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 20:52 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [spdx-tech] Expression of interest: technical metadata that embellishes the license lists G'day everyone, I mentioned this on today's implementer's call, but wanted to cast a wider net and make sure I didn't miss anyone who wasn't on the call but who might be interested. The background is that for a while now I've had a need for additional technical metadata for listed licenses and license exceptions, above and beyond what's present in the SPDX license lists themselves. Right now I'm using various methods to synthesise that metadata in my own tooling, but believe that it may be of value to other implementers and therefore may be worth centralising. I've also gotten the sense that attempting to add new metadata elements (especially technical ones) to the SPDX license lists themselves would likely face resistance from the legal team, so I've been pondering an alternative approach of having parallel implementer-oriented artifacts that would be maintained separately (e.g. by the SPDX tech team). The purpose of this email is primarily to find out if other implementers might find such a mechanism useful, and if so to form an informal group that might work on a proposal for this, perhaps covering topics such as: * what common technical metadata elements would be valuable for implementers, along with their specifications * what data format(s) these artifacts might take * what the process for maintaining them might look like (including details like where might they live, who might have write access to them, how they get updated and published when a new version of the SPDX license list is published, etc.) * how do these elements map into the SPDX model (if at all - perhaps this lives entirely outside the model?) * whether to formally approach the legal team to advocate for this metadata to be merged into the SPDX license list (perhaps at publishing time) * etc. etc. Cheers, Peter Intel Deutschland GmbH Registered Address: Dornacher Straße 1, 85622 Feldkirchen, Germany Tel: +49 89 991 430, www.intel.de Managing Directors: Harry Demas, Jeffrey Schneiderman, Yin Chong Sorrell Chairperson of the Supervisory Board: Nicole Lau Registered Seat: Munich Commercial Register: Amtsgericht München HRB 186928 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6050): https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-tech/message/6050 Mute This Topic: https://lists.spdx.org/mt/116717999/21656 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.spdx.org/g/Spdx-tech/unsub [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
