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<font size="-1"><tt>Hello,<br>
<br>
This is definitely a needed feature (mostly for StackOverflow
copy & pastes ASAIAC)<br>
<br>
My PoV on raised points above:<br>
<br>
> REUSE-Snippet-* vs </tt></font><font size="-1"><tt><font
size="-1"><tt></tt></font>SPDX-Snippet*<br>
Definitely in favor of aligning with SPDX standard, for
standardization reasons,<br>
but also to facilitate automatic detection.<br>
BUT, they are useless without corresponding END tags<br>
-> should we see with SPDX team to add them ?<br>
<br>
> The tool would have to crawl more than the first 4
kilobytes of a file<br>
> to catch all potential snippets.<br>
This means more time & computing power, but searching for a
fixed string 'SPDX-Snippet'<br>
is still much less effort than searching for plenty of
keywords, regexps,<br>
or similarities with license texts for ex.<br>
<br>
> SPDX-License-Identifier and SPDX-SnippetLicenseConcluded
are quite different from each other,<br>
> so one more pattern of tags to learn for adopters.<br>
We can still search for "SPDX-License-Identifier" in the first
4kb,<br>
then </tt></font><font size="-1"><tt><font size="-1"><tt>'SPDX-Snippet*'</tt></font>
in the rest of the files.<br>
<br>
> marking every single snippet of copied code is a tedious
task for developers,<br>
It sure is... and will likely only be used under constraint :)<br>
Source code editors could also help here with automatic text
insertion.<br>
When we have an open source snippet detection solution, it could
also help inserting those tags.<br>
<br>
And an open question: should we add the possbility to also
specify a source URL along<br>
license and copyright information to easily trace back the
snippet to the source ?<br>
<br>
Nico<br>
</tt></font><br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/03/2020 08:07, Matija Šuklje
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:67dd26bc-b231-48b9-a495-52e388d74992@fsfe.org">On
četrtek, 05. marec 2020 13:46:01 CET, Gustafsson, Stefan wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br>
P.S. Slightly unrelated to the how-to-mark-snippets-topic: in
the example you chose, one could argue that copying a snippet of
code under CC-BY-SA-4.0 into an Apache-2.0 licensed file/project
could make that whole file/project a "Adapted Material" in the
spirit and letter of CC-BY-SA-4.0, and hence the whole
file/project would need to be licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0
(Section 3.b) or a BY-SA Compatible License - so no need
bothering marking the snippet anymore 😉 </blockquote>
<br>
Sure, but that is just one example (not uncommon, as AFAIR
StackOverflow uses CC-BY-SA¹), and there are other – perhaps even
incompatible – sets of licenses one could take as an example. Do
you have a better suggestion?
<br>
<br>
In any case, since we are talking about source code, the fact that
a snippet is differently licensed from the majority of the code
still somewhat similar to including a differently licensed library
or copy a file into the codebase. So, one can still fix the
potential incompatibility (or avoid certain obligations) by
removing that portion of the code and replacing it with one that
is compatible, without major harm. As long as all files and
snippets have their licensing info clearly attached to them, you
can fix anything that needs fixing.
<br>
<br>
Following your example, CC-BY-SA-4.0 might apply to the whole
file, but what happens if someone later removes that snippet. If
the person before them simply changed the license of the whole
file to CC-BY-SA-4.0, then one would assume the file would
continue to be under that license (instead of Apache-2.0, which
would be more logical).
<br>
<br>
In addition, I would argue that the rest of the file remains under
Apache-2.0 even if a CC-BY-SA-4.0 snippet was embedded into it.
That is the licensing situation of the code. It is only in the
next step when we look into the specific obligations each license
(and piece of code) demands. Only then we decide that CC-BY-SA-4.0
is the common denominator² of both CC-BY-SA-4.0 and Apache-2.0,
and that it is that license which applies to the new work as a
whole (while parts of the work are still licensed as they are).
<br>
<br>
Now, if this was binary-only, things might have been different³.
<br>
<br>
<br>
cheers,
<br>
Matija
<br>
—
<br>
1 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service#licensing">https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service#licensing</a>
<br>
<br>
2 Although another common denominator could be GPL-3.0-only.
<br>
<br>
3 C.f. adplumbatio vs ferruminatio
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/RE:Adplumbatio">https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/RE:Adplumbatio</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/318772">https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/318772</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Nicolas Toussaint
OBS - Orange Business Services - Lyon, France
Tel: +33 608 763 559</pre>
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