Hey all, In Fedora, we've got a curious case that has come up: a packager wants to ship software that has changed licenses based on time[1]. Specifically, MariaDB's MaxScale has a version of it that has reached its change date from BUSL-1.1 to GPL-2.0-or-later. The problem is, of course, that we don't have a way of presenting that information and BUSL-1.1 itself is not permitted. With the interesting exception of MPL-2.0 (which has a license conversion clause), it's fairly rare for something like this to exist in FOSS licenses.
However, the BUSL has been around for a few years now, and things that people want are starting to become available under FOSS licenses that the BUSL copyright owner set them to. While if the copyright holder is still active, they may be able to update the sources to switch the license, if they aren't around, then we still need a way to represent it. I theorized that it might make sense to add the "as" operand for this purpose[2]. For example, if a package foo by company baz has BUSL-1.1 and sets the change date to 2024-08-01 to convert to GPL-3.0-or-later, but the company goes under on 2024-07-31, we don't really have a way to represent this when it becomes fine to ship regardless. I would propose that we add the following stanza mechanism: "BUSL-1.1 as <target-license>", where "<target-license>" is the SPDX identifier for the license terms we are actually using. This would also allow us to represent when someone has opted to use MPL-2.0 as one of the GNU licenses, as is permitted under section 3.3 of the license. For the MaxScale case, it would be "BUSL-1.1 as GPL-2.0-or-later". What do you folks think? [1]: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/3O4GMABVWVRMAHNKALKPJJ53PMVYSNQS/ [2]: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/Y4Y2NCCVHELSSHS2M663VLUJENWWSEGL/ -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1883): https://lists.spdx.org/g/spdx/message/1883 Mute This Topic: https://lists.spdx.org/mt/107317043/21656 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.spdx.org/g/spdx/leave/2655439/21656/1698928721/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
