Hi,

Philip McGrath <xxxxxx@philipmcgrath.com> writes:

> On 12/7/23 02:55, John Cowan wrote:
>> The MIT license text plainly says (emphasis added) "The above
>> copyright notice and this permission notice (including the next
>> paragraph) *shall* be included in all copies or substantial portions
>> of the Software."  It does not say that a link to an outboard copy
>> of the license is an adequate substitute for this requirement: the
>> word "shall" implies that the requirement must be followed as
>> written.
>>
>
> I think an expressed preference of actual SRFI authors to keep the
> full license comments as they are is a more than sufficient reason to
> do so.
>
> Just in an attempt at clarity, I'd distinguish three courses of action
> one might consider:
>
> 1. Add SPDX metadata, but do not remove anything. I'm not aware of any
> objections to this course of action.
>
> 2. Add SPDX metadata and remove existing comments, leaving the full
> text of the MIT license nowhere. For the reasons John explains, this
> course of action would seem to violate the requirements of the MIT
> license. (It would be different if the original author included only
> SPDX comments, as some people now do.)
>
> 3. Add SPDX metadata and move the full text of the MIT license to a
> separate file distributed alongside the original file. This at least
> arguably could satisfy the requirements of the license: for example,
> copies of MIT-licensed software in compiled form often move the
> required text to a separate file. However, some people do have
> concerns about this approach. In my last email I wrote that it has the
> advantage that readers don't have to determine if the text is exactly
> the standard text, but it also has the disadvantage that copiers must
> be sure to also copy the separate file for the license.

Thanks for trying to keep the discussion focused :-).

Personally I'd opt for 3., but some have voiced concerns (it'd be harder
to copy the files around without forgetting to also copy the license
files referred to by SPDX under the LICENSES/ directory).

So I think we could start with just 1., which appears uncontroversial
enough to get going.  I think we should also accept new SRFIs whose
authors choose to use SPDX-only + LICENSES/MIT.txt, as that's very easy
to do right, especially using the "reuse annotate -lMIT -c'Your Name
<xxxxxx@email>' some-file.scm" command (as well as "reuse download MIT" to
pull the license text).

The SPDX comments will use three semicolons (';;;').  When problematic
licenses are encountered, authors will be contacted to have them changed
or clarified.  Public domain existing works will be annotated with a
SPDX custom LicenseRef "license" and original author, if missing, as
that's required by the 'reuse lint' tool.  Likewise for less common
licenses such as the SLIB, which is not listed in the SPDX standard at
this time.

As already acked by Arthur, to preserve this effort in time, the SRFI
contribution process should mention of the REUSE compliance effort and
that 'reuse lint' should succeed before a work is submitted.  A CI check
could even run this in GitHub.

If there aren't further concerns, I'll get going, resending the existing
PRs and producing new ones, following what I've written above.

--
Thanks,
Maxim