[GNUnet-developers] spdx proposal

[ng0]

Hi *, and happy new year!

A while back I've talked to someone about SPDX (https://spdx.org/about) and the 
purpose of it.
Since it doesn't add any damage, and it helps humans as well as programs who 
need to parse
files for copyleft/rights, I want to discuss how my patch should look like to 
add this to gnunet core.
I will adjust the rest of our repositories after core is done. It would be good 
to adjust Taler
repositories as well.

You have a good amount of freedom in how to apply spdx.

Practical example, pleroma (AGPL3-only software), has this header:

# Pleroma: A lightweight social networking server
# Copyright © 2017-2019 Pleroma Authors <https://pleroma.social/>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: AGPL-3.0-only

and includes the normal "LICENSE" file in their root.

Next example. Linux (https://lwn.net/Articles/739183/) is using a mechanism
which supports the software making use of spdx. If you read into their current
source tree you see that they have a folder 'LICENSES' which contains license
specifications according to their rules: 
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.18/process/license-rules.html

There are applications to help with the process, but I haven't looked into them 
yet.


We have a number of options here:
1. Do as pleroma does. cut down the license part of the header to the necessary 
parts.
2. Add SPDX as an addition to our current header, no removal.
3. Look more closely into what Linux has done.
4. Ignore spdx.

I'm in favor of 2 and would also go for 1 if people found it reasonable.