License field

[Faré]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 12:49 PM, Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.net> wrote:
> On 10/16/15 Oct 16 -2:03 PM, Faré wrote:
>> I propose we document that the license field should if possible
>> contain an identifier from
>>   http://spdx.org/licenses/
>>   http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6867
>
> Do you expect this field to be a string, or should it be encoded in some
> special way (e.g., a keyword representation of the identifier)?
>
> If we do the latter, we could check it but (a) this would bloat ASDF
> further and (b) it would incur a maintenance debt in perpetuity as the
> set of SPDX identifiers changes.
>
> One more question: What if the software is NOT open source?
>
I was considering just a string for now, as has always been.
Then a linter could go over the packages in Quicklisp and check that
they are all open source with a proper SPDX license string.
For closed source code, I don't know — probably "Proprietary" or
something would do — or just anything not valid per SPDX.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
...so this guy walks into a bar.
"The usual, Mr. Descartes?" the barman asked.
"I think not," Rene replied, and promptly disappeared.