On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Richard Hughes <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I've been using SPDX for years in the AppStream specification to > describe applications that can be installed in software centers. I'm > using the AND, OR extensions, and am soon to include the WITH > exception support too[2].
Very nice! About the dead link, I am not sure exceptions have been published yet, though it could be a bug too. > AppStream can be used to describe free > software, but is increasing being used for other things too, for > instance, in the LVFS[2] firmware update service. In this we describe > firmware licensing using SDPX tags, but I'm not sure what to do about > non-free firmware. OpenHardware firmware is fine, and we can use all > the existing IDs to represent that correctly. > > At the moment I've asked vendors to use: > <project_license>proprietary</project_license> to indicate it's > nonfree, but this obviously isn't a SPDX ID and probably will make the > specification people quite upset. What should I be using? Dropping the > <project_license> tags for non-free firmware is fine, but it's then > confusing the "explicitly nonfree" firmware with the "unspecified" > firmware and makes validation hard. It also means there's no clickable > link explaining what proprietary means, unlike all the other SPDX IDs. > Is there already an ID I can use for this? IMHO using your own ID extensions is quite fine, there is nothing upsetting about it, especially since it provides valuable indication to downstream users about the licensing terms, even if this is not precisely pointing to a unique license text. The alternative could to have also a catch-all "non-free" or "proprietary" license ID in SPDX indeed. -- Cordially Philippe Ombredanne _______________________________________________ Spdx mailing list [email protected] https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx
