On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 7:45 AM, Patrick Masson <[email protected]>wrote:
> Could this be a working group? > It seems to me still too unformed an idea, and with too few people committed to actually working on it, to make it a WG. But I may be misreading the level of committed involvement. Luis > > On 12/19/2013 10:03 AM, Simon Phipps wrote: > > This sounds useful and I'd support the idea if a group were willing to > make it happen. I suggest a staged implementation with the "Popular > Licenses" being made available first and the others set up to return a > placeholder message or error. > > > On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 2:07 AM, Joe Murray > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Would it be possible for OSI to make available a machine readable list >> of the licenses approved by OSI? The format - a csv, xml or some other file >> in a repository, or a REST or some other service from opensource.org - >> is not as important as that the content be authoritative. There may be an >> official specification for how software licenses should be made available, >> but I am not aware of it. http://spdx.org/licenses/ provides a list of >> licenses but it too is not designed for automated use (though it might be >> scrapable). Ideally, it seems like the recognition of licenses by OSI >> should produce some output that could be used by SPDX tools, but this >> request is a bit simpler. >> >> Background: >> CiviCRM would like the set of licenses in this form in order to ensure >> that any extensions that we list on civicrm.org and provide >> auto-download services for via civicrm.org are using licenses approved >> by OSI. However, the request seems of broader interest. Karl Fogel >> suggested I pose it to these two lists. >> >> CiviCRM decided to try to up its game with respect to licensing of its >> extensions partly as a result of someone coming across >> http://www.zdnet.com/github-improves-open-source-licensing-polices-7000018213/. >> While early on most civicrm.org listed extensions were hosted on >> drupal.org and thus were guaranteed to have a GPL license, now most of >> our new listings are for software on github. CiviCRM would also like to >> 'assist' extension developers in actually including an accurate license >> text file in their extension by checking it is present in the extension's >> root directory and that its text matches what they are listing as the >> license. I've been asked to liaise with OSI on the availability of such a >> machine readable list of these licenses. >> >> Possible implementation strategy: >> If OSI decides it would like to do this, it may be technically as >> simple as copying the licenses on opensource.org from one type of node >> to another, then doing a bit of cleanup to support some requirements for >> automated use. Looking at opensource.org, I see a content type was at >> some point created specifically for licenses, though no content has been >> posted of that type, and all the licenses are currently created as nodes >> with content type=page. >> >> In terms of fields for automated use, it would be useful to move the >> short title into its own field rather than having it in parentheses at the >> end of the long title, and to make a plain text version of licenses >> suitable for inclusion as a LICENSE.txt file in source code available in >> addition to the current html formatted ones. If the approved licenses on >> opensource.org were put into suitable content types, they could easily >> be made available as a feed or exported periodically to a file that could >> be stored in an authoritative repository. >> >> I am also trying to understand the proper way to handle headers in >> license files, particularly for the small number of cases where they make a >> difference, eg GPL-3.0 versus GPL-3.0+ (see >> http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#howto, and the differences >> between the 'How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs' sections of >> http://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0 and http://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0+). >> This seems like something we want to assist developers in getting right by >> using reasonable defaults. One possibility we are mulling over is >> optionally automating the creation of a LICENSE.txt file using metadata >> about the Author, publication date, and license and suggesting that authors >> use that file in their repo or request a manual review of their >> LICENSE.txt. It would be convenient if suggested header text for licenses >> was made available in machine readable form from OSI, including for the >> differences between 'version x only' and 'version x or later' headers. >> >> I am willing to volunteer with doing some of the implementation work if >> a decision is made to provide this new service. >> >> Joe Murray, PhD >> President, JMA Consulting >> [email protected] >> skype JosephPMurray twitter JoeMurray >> 416.466.1281 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Infrastructure mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/infrastructure >> >> > > > -- > *Simon Phipps* http://webmink.com > *Meshed Insights Ltd * > *Office:* +1 (415) 683-7660 *or* +44 (238) 098 7027 > *Mobile*: +44 774 776 2816 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Infrastructure mailing > [email protected]http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/infrastructure > > > -- > || | | |||| || || | |||| ||| | ||| > Patrick Masson > General Manager, Director & Secretary to the Board > Open Source Initiative > 855 El Camino Real, Ste 13A, #270 > Palo Alto, CA 94301 > United States > Skype: massonpj > sip: [email protected] > Ph: (970) 4MASSON > Em: [email protected] <[email protected]> > Ws: www.opensource.org > > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss > >
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