SPDX [FreeBSD WIKI]

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====== Software Project Data Exchange SPDX(R) ======

[[https://spdx.org/|SPDX]] is a set of standards for communicating the components, licenses, and copyrights associated with software.
The open adoption permitted by the BSD license is one of %%FreeBSD%%'s strongest points so it is convenient for the project to facilitate the use of tooling and standards that make our licensing information clearer.

===== Introductory Information =====

A [[https://spdx.org/using-spdx|guide]] to using the license identifiers can be found in the SPDX specification, in particular [[https://spdx.org/spdx-specification-21-web-version#h.twlc0ztnng3b|appendix V]].

There is an [[https://spdx.org/frequently-asked-questions-faq-0|FAQ]] that provides a few additional details.

David Wheeler put together an SPDX [[https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/spdx-tutorial|tutorial]].

If you want to programmatically access the license metadata – see the related [[https://github.com/spdx/license-list-data/blob/master/accessingLicenses.md|article]].

In terms of tools, there is a license [[https://github.com/spdx/license-coverage-grader|grader]] that will scan source code and report how well the licenses are documented.
It is relatively new, so it may have a few “rough edges”.

There is a variety of [[https://github.com/spdx|tools]] sponsored by SPDX. Gary O'Neall maintains the Java [[https://github.com/spdx/tools|tools]], but there are also Python tools being maintained as well.

Another good resource is the mailing lists for SPDX.  The Legal [[https://spdx.org/legal-team|team]] is responsible for maintaining the license list and the license matching guidelines.
The Technical [[https://spdx.org/WorkgroupTechnical|team]] works on the spec and tooling.
The mailing lists can be found in the pages for each of the teams.

===== Progress =====

Other projects are in early adoption stages and some seem happy replacing the license text with License tags.
For %%FreeBSD%% that approach is not reasonable. Here are some guiding principles:

  * The tags are only advisory and not a replacement for official licensing information.
  * ID tags shall not be mandatory: we will not impose them on "contrib" software.
  * Since the tags can be compound (OR or AND), the tags should go **before** any copyright or license text. Ideally at the start of the first licensing comment. This differs a little from other projects where the tags are placed after the copyrights.

==== Advances ====

  * The [[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/pref-license.html|Preferred License]] committers guide now includes an SPDX License tag for new files.
  * Some years ago we did a [[https://people.freebsd.org/~pfg/docs/spdx/|license audit]] by using access to a tool kindly provided by Wind River.
  * License tags are being adopted by stages: the first stage included files under a BSD-4-Clause License, followed by the BSD-3-Clause and finally a mixed bag with the majority of the BSD-2-Clause and its variants was committed. This doesn't mean we have finished but a lot is covered. About 9000 files are already covered.
  * Now we have to start looking branch by branch identifying the files where we don't have license information or where it has been tagged wrongly.
  * Many of the older 4-Clause and 3-Clause files, especially those that come from the other BSDs, are likely to have updates available.

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