Re: Proposal to use SPDX for SRFI license/copyright declarations
Maxim Cournoyer 09 Dec 2023 21:56 UTC
Hi,
John Cowan <xxxxxx@ccil.org> writes:
[...]
>> If files carry no license (so the license status is unclear), a license
>> must not be added without consent by the author. Either it is
>> insignificant, in which case nothing would have changed in front of a court
>> anyway, or it is significant, in which case it would have been wrong to
>> guess and attach a license.
>>
>
> The *literal* interpretation of a missing license is that the code is
> unlicensed (no rights available), which cannot have been the intention of
> the author. The clear assumption has always been that such files are
> implicitly licensed under the MIT license. Moving from implicit to
> explicit is an appropriate move, and clearly permitted under the implicit
> license.
That seems a reasonable interpretation, in the context of SRFIs, given
the licensing guidelines offered to authors [0]. If we agree on this,
it means we deem it acceptable to add REUSE 'SPDX-License-Identifier:
MIT' comments to source files not already explicitly containing a
license notice.
Does someone disagree with the above?
[0] https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-process.html
--
Thanks,
Maxim