[REUSE] Support / repurpose central LICENSE file
Matija Šuklje
matija at suklje.name
Tue May 19 17:49:51 UTC 2020
Late to the party, but adding my thoughts in short.
As others have stated, neither proposal is optimal, and in any case with so
much crowd muscle memory, we’re damned if we change the status quo, and remain
damned if we don’t.
The lazy way out would be to keep it as it is and just let the `LICENSE` file
be outside of REUSE’s scope – if there is one, so be it, but there needs to be
a `LICENSES/` folder.
If we want to be more avantgarde, it is a great opportunity to improve the
situation. The question remains if the gains outweighs the losses (kudos for
framing it that way already at the start!).
> ## Option 1: LICENSE file valid for one-license repositories
This was already in REUSE spec before, and went out for a reason. The cons
simply outweigh the pros. And if anyone really wants to continue to have a
`LICENSE` file, they still can, and their REUSE compliance is just a simple:
`cp LICENSE LICENSES/${spdx_id}.txt` away.
> ## Option 2: Repurpose LICENSE file to explain general licensing situation
The problem I see with this is that it would add an additional burden on the
maintainers, while giving very limited benefit.
TBH, if I saw something written in a `LICENSE` file, I would still take a quick
glance at the filenames in `LICENSES/`. Well, actually, I would still run
`reuse` or FOSSology over it anyway, as I don’t trust that whenever someone
introduced a new license somewhere into the code base, they actually bothered
to update the `LICENSE` file (and I’d only rely on the content of `LICENSES/`
folder, if the project was REUSE compliant).
So I see no benefit in Option 2.
I think a suggestion (not a hard rule of the spec) that they should summarise
the software’s licensing situation in README (or LICENSE) should be enough
IMHO.
Also, while the `LICENSE` file in the root folder is common, there are many
other common ways out there – `docs/licenses`, `lib/oss_licenses`, `COPYING`,
`COPYING.GPL`, `COPYRIGHT`, `COPYLEFT`, …
If we really wanted to have something useful, we could ask for an SPDX file in
the root of the folder, but even then we would need to trust that the
maintainer actually regenerates the SPDX file regularly enough. In previous
versions of the REUSE, that was actually part of the spec but it was removed,
because it was deemed that we cannot burned the maintainers with also
maintaining a SPDX file, especially when the `reuse` tool can very easily
create an SPDX file out of a compliant codebase anyway.
cheers,
Matija
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