[arch-dev-public] Using SPDX License list as identifiers

[Ivy Foster]

On 22 Oct 2019, at  1:59 pm +0200, Jerome Leclanche wrote:
> This just came up on IRC. Thoughts on using the SPDX license list as valid
> license identifiers for all packages?
> https://spdx.org/licenses/

> Most of the identifiers would change but we would have a consistent and
> much larger, externally-maintained list to choose from. It would also be a
> little more accurate; eg. the SPDX allows for distinctions such as
> "LGPL-3.0-or-later" vs. "LGPL-3.0-only".

> We could retain the current identifiers as symlinks.

I think it would probably be useful in the long run, though of course
would take work to implement.

For one thing, it would put the onus of deciding what is and is not a
common license on someone else, making that officially Not Our
Problem.

Also, their system does allow some useful things that aren't really
obvious how to do with Arch's current set-up. For example, some
licenses have optional exception clauses developers can add which
might not be reflected in a standard Arch font array, but which can be
conveyed easily with their "license expressions" (e.g., "GPL3+ WITH
Font-exception-2.0" for GPL'd font packages that don't cause PDFs with
the font embedded to become GPL'd documents)

Cheers,
Ivy
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