Bug#696185: [copyright-format] Use short names from SPDX
Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> writes:
> Sorry, (c) seems very unlikely: earlier versions of SPDX had the same
> convention as DEP-5, but later versions moved to "GPL-2.0-only" and
> "GPL-2.0-or-later", which I think was the result of a request from the
> FSF to make it clearer whether the "or later" clause of the {A,L,}GPL
> family was allowed or excluded.
It was, yes. The current SPDX identifiers for those licenses are a
political compromise that I wouldn't want to revisit if I were SPDX.
> I would personally be in favour of (b) as our long-term direction, but
> for now the status quo is basically a variation of (a): keep using the
> Debian-specific names where they exist, but where there is no
> Debian-specific name for a license, the SPDX name is as good a name as
> any other.
Agreed on both counts.
Fedora is adopting SPDX wholesale, so while we were dubious at first
whether SPDX had staying power, it looks like it does and is slowly
becoming the standard in free software. In the long term, that's probably
the direction we want to go. In the short term, I don't think there's a
huge hurry; there are minor advantages to aligning with them, but SPDX
still has a ton of work to do to absorb all of the licenses in Fedora,
which will help us when we're ready to do a switch. (But I would
definitely use SPDX identifiers where there isn't a Debian standard to
follow, since it will make that switch easier.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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