[License-discuss] [Infrastructure] Machine readable source of OSI approved licenses?

[Philip Odence]

Below is a simple example of a marked up license.

The symbols << and >> designate the beginning and end of mark up statements.
In this case the top section is optional and marked as such with beginoptional and endoptional.
Within that and further down in the text are a total of three places where a copyright holders name can be used. For each of those is instruction on matching using a simple regex, in this case .+ which means any string of characters. For each there is also an example and also a variable name so the actual text could be captured.

This (in addition to the aforementioned matching guidelines) is to instruct a person or a program how to go about matching this license to some license text found in the wild.

I continue to think it would be valuable to have a call with a couple of representatives from each organization to explore synergies.


           <<beginOptional;name=copyrightSection>>

Copyright (c) <<var;name=copyright;original= <year> <owner>;match=.+;example=John Doe>>
All rights reserved.
<<endOptional>

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
   documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY <<var;name=copyrightHolderAsIs;original=THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS;match=.+;example=JOHN DOE>> "AS IS" AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL <<var;name=copyrightHolderLiability;original=THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS;match=.+;example=JOHN DOE>> BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

From: Phil Odence <podence at blackducksoftware.com<mailto:podence at blackducksoftware.com>>
Reply-To: "license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>" <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 7:14 AM
To: "license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>" <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Infrastructure] Machine readable source of OSI approved licenses?

We'll get you some examples and some more detail, but the main idea is to support matching (for both humans and programs). The idea is to do as much as we can with the general guidelines, but to mark up where need be (as in my BSD copyright text example).


From: Luis Villa <luis at lu.is<mailto:luis at lu.is>>
Reply-To: "license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>" <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Date: Sunday, February 23, 2014 6:21 PM
To: License Discuss <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [Infrastructure] Machine readable source of OSI approved licenses?

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 8:02 AM, J Lovejoy <opensource at jilayne.com<mailto:opensource at jilayne.com>> wrote:

We are in the process of updating the text files with markup to implement the license matching guidelines located here: http://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines - the goal being to provide a way to ensure that when one SPDX user identifies a license, it is reliably the same as when another SPDX user identifies the same license.  Of course, the main example of this is the BSD 3 and 4 clause licenses and Apache 1.1, which may include the names of the specific copyright holder even though the rest of the license is exactly the same (goal being to avoid concluding every BSD-3-Clause with a different copyright holder name gets identified as a different license.)

Hi, Jilayne, Phil-
What is the intended markup here? The matching guidelines seem useful, but it isn't clear to me what a license marked up that way would look like. Is there an example somewhere?

Luis
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