Hi Bernhard,
On 13/05/2024 15:05, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
Hello, in https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-docs/issues/147 How to determine "overall" license
I've asked for the use case to be considered that I want my Free Software component to be attractive for others. Especially to those that look for something they can integrate into their product and is compatible with their current licenses.
As there are many Free Software products, I'll need a first indication to either look elsewhere or to take a deeper look. If a repository indicates the license that everything will be compatible under a license, which usually is the one with the highest freedom protection, that is the needed info.
However REUSE 3.0 cannot indicate such a license (at least I do not know how). Thus a repository which is fully REUSE compatible currently is at a disadvantage compared to other repos on popular code platforms. Some platforms do not understand the information per file coming from Reuse. And even if those platforms could deal with the more complex information provided by a REUSE compatible repos, they still could not display this important summary info about licensing in a repo, as it is not expressed.
I'm not a REUSE expert, but I believe that the typical practice would be to have a top-level COPYING or LICENSE file which is the symlink to the "highest compatible" license in the licenses directory.
Is Matija's closing of the issue 147 showing that this use case is irrelevant to REUSE?
I think it was closed because:
- the concept of a concluded license is out of scope for REUSE (AFAIU); - your "highest compatible" license is something different than a concluded license.
Regards, Arnout