From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9B9F7C433FE for ; Wed, 25 May 2022 22:44:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S238585AbiEYWn7 (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 May 2022 18:43:59 -0400 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net ([23.128.96.19]:38742 "EHLO lindbergh.monkeyblade.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S240439AbiEYWn5 (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 May 2022 18:43:57 -0400 Received: from protestant.ebb.org (protestant.ebb.org [50.56.179.12]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E7D6EA3098; Wed, 25 May 2022 15:43:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (unknown [216.161.86.18]) (Authenticated sender: bkuhn) by protestant.ebb.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 2EF49820B4; Wed, 25 May 2022 15:43:54 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 25 May 2022 15:29:20 -0700 From: "Bradley M. Kuhn" To: linux-spdx@vger.kernel.org, J Lovejoy , copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org Cc: Thomas Gleixner , Luis Chamberlain , tj@kernel.org, gregkh@linuxfoundation.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, jeyu@kernel.org, shuah@kernel.org, bvanassche@acm.org, dan.j.williams@intel.com, joe@perches.com, keescook@chromium.org, rostedt@goodmis.org, minchan@kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-block@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Goldwyn Rodrigues , Kuno Woudt , Richard Fontana , Ciaran Farrell , Christopher De Nicolo , Christoph Hellwig , Jonathan Corbet , Thorsten Leemhuis Subject: Re: [PATCH v9 1/6] LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license Message-ID: References: <20211029184500.2821444-1-mcgrof@kernel.org> <20211029184500.2821444-2-mcgrof@kernel.org> <87h75g0xbm.ffs@tglx> <87y1yph1cm.fsf@ebb.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org J Lovejoy wrote: > (And to give credit where credit is due, Bradley's input during that > challenging "negotiation" was very helpful. :) 😊 … thank you! I'd written today: >> So, this problem that Thomas notes above is definitely an error by the >> SPDX project, *just like* the one that exists for the deprecated “GPL-2.0” J Lovejoy replied: > To be clear, the GPL-2.0 identifier was never an error by the SPDX team - we > were always very clear as to what it meant/means. … but notwithstanding a clear definition of a moniker (which I agree indeed you've made for most SPDX identifiers), if that definition fails to adequately match historically understanding (and/or fails to take into account nuances in the document it represents), confusion ensues for users. Users *were* confused about “GPL-2.0” (remember, we did a small (admittedly non-scientific) survey at a session at a conference — FOSDEM I think it was?) Most SPDX *users* won't speak its defined terms fluently; I suspect most of Linux's licensors (and even most licensees) don't speak SPDX fluently, so presumably you want SPDX identifiers to have some intuitiveness — particularly for the use case of linux-spdx, which requires the identifiers to be *both* human-readable and machine-readable. This is relevant to the copyleft-next-0.3.1 identifier. SPDX could define “copyleft-next-0.3.1” to mean for SPDX purposes: “the text of copyleft-next without any options in its terms exercised/removed” (— although I note https://spdx.org/licenses/copyleft-next-0.3.1.html seems to be wholly silent regarding options exercising/removing). However, there is currently confusion — shown in the fact that Thomas still asked: >>>> If I want to remove this option, then how do I express this with a SPDX >>>> license identifier? Sigh! … upon noticing this part of copyleft-next: >>> + Unless I explicitly remove the option of Distributing Covered Works >>> + under Later Versions, You may Distribute Covered Works under any Later >>> + Version. Anyway, I'm pointing out SPDX's shortcomings on this point *not* to captiously admonish SPDX, but rather to point out that any issues with SPDX identifiers and their formal definitions shouldn't influence a decision about what licenses are acceptable for inclusion as dual-license options in Linux. Plus, I remain hopeful that over the long-term, the SPDX project will take feedback from efforts like linux-spdx to solve the kinds of problems that have come up in this thread and others. Finally, I've already started a sub-thread on the copyleft-next list to start discussing maybe the license (in future versions) shouldn't have this option anyway (for unrelated policy reasons). That might yield a side-benefit of making the problem evaporate entirely for SPDX. (Anyway, after 25 years of living with GPL's “-or-later vs. -only” mess — I, for one, am convinced new licenses like copyleft-next should try very hard to not repeat that mistake.) -- bkuhn