[License-review] : [License] Linkumori Free License, Version 1.0 – Submission for OSI Review

[Matija Šuklje]

Dne sreda, 17. junij 2026 ob 20:51:45 Srednjeevropski poletni čas je subham 
mahesh napisal(a):

> 2. This is not theoretical. I wrote it to govern my own work and intend to 
> use it. More importantly, the problem it solves is real and current: none of 
> the major permissive licenses give a clear, enforceable answer for 
> attribution when code is minified, bundled, or served via CDN, and that's a 
> gap practitioners keep running into.

There is rarely any case law about permissive licenses, as is. And by 
anecdotal evidence the approach to licensing most web devs take is more of the 
“laissez-faire” kind, if I may be so blunt. So it surprises me a bit, that 
this is something practitioners are running into. If you have anything on this 
topic, I’d be super interested!

> I'm happy for Matija to weigh in on this thread if he'd like, he's welcome 
> to respond with whatever he's found on this problem.

I’m very happy to discuss, but perhaps this is best to move off of _this_ list 
and maybe move to <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> or just person-to-
person e-mail.

In short, I’m looking to solve this compliance issue on a more generic way so 
without addition of new licenses or specifications, and only minimal 
(optional, but desired) impact on tooling. The idea is to have a way to 
achieve basic compliance with any license you throw at it.

What Carlo was alluding to was my (intentionally) provocative initial 
suggestion to use REUSE/SPDX tags in JS/CSS source code in a way that those 
tags stay in the minified code:
<https://matija.suklje.name/persistent-copyright-licensing-information-in-client-side-javascript-css-and-similar-a-proposal-call-for-help>

Later, I presented that at FOSDEM (and LLW) and gathered feedback from both 
lawyers, compliance officers, individual web devs and big companies:
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5313-persistent-copyright-licensing-information-in-client-side-js-css-sim-proposal-/>

The plan was to spur some (hopefully not too heated) debate between lawyers 
and web devs to get to an actually useful proposal we can agree upon. The 
outcomes of that I presented at this year’s LLW 2026, the slide deck to which 
I’m attaching.

At LLW 2026 we agreed upon something that I have yet to write down and 
publish¹, but it essentially boils down to:

• apply <https://reuse.software> best practices to browser-side JS/CSS/… as 
you would normally
• have a tool of your choice (e.g. `reuse spdx`) produce an SBOM or some other 
“notice”/attribution file – whatever works for you best
• link that SBOM/attribution file into <link rel="license"> in the HTML you 
serve
• optionally, set <link fetchpriority="high">, if you feel like the license 
information needs to be served at the very same time as the code itself (e.g. 
German approach); or if you feel like it needs to load (right) after the JS/
CSS, so the webapp loads faster, you can also look at `preload=`
• optionally, you can link that same SBOM/attribution file in the webUI to 
show/offer to download the same licensing info
• there was no agreement, or really any strong opinions on which format or 
document type to choose for this, so the idea is to let everyone decide what’s 
best for them – SPDX, CycloneDX, “attribution” file, …

Subham, I think it would be great to have a VoIP chat so we better get on the 
same page, and then continue in writing either directly or via license-
discuss. What do you say?
 

cheers,
Matija
—
¹ I’m doing this in the coming days/weeks. I was just buried in work and then 
my server fell down, so had to first bring my blog back up.
-- 
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www:    https://matija.suklje.name
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