Proposal: Allow REUSE compatible License Statements in License Policy

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Dienstag, 7. Januar 2020 06:33:11 CET Andreas Cord-Landwehr wrote:
> 
> Regarding the license statements for the "accecpted by KDE" clause: My main
> motivation was to introduce a workaround with some licensing mixups we have
> in our repositories. For example (there are many more, these are only the
> first in my list):
> - LGPL-2.0-only OR LGPL 3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-LGPL:
>   https://github.com/KDE/kio/blob/master/autotests/kfilecopytomenutest.cpp
> -  LGPL-2.1-only OR LGPL 3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-LGPL:
>   https://github.com/KDE/attica/blob/master/src/projectparser.cpp
> So, there are two LGPL based licenses with the same accepted-by-KDE clause,
> which relies on the LGPL-3 clause for defining a proxy. Yet, they state
> different LGPL-2.* versions, once LGPL-2.0-only and once LGPL-2.1-only. The
> KDE clause -- in my opinion -- does not need this distinction, as it only
> relates to the LGPL-3 version for defining is meaning.
> So another option would be to define that later versions of the LGPL-3.0 are
> meant. This should not change any meaning of the current license
> statements. What do you think?

Are there really that many different combinations with the KDE exception? Is 
there more than

* LGPL-2.0-only OR LGPL 3.0-only OR LicenseRef
* LGPL-2.1-only OR LGPL 3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-LGPL
* LGPL 3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-LGPL

for LGPL and

* GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL
* GPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL

for GPL?

Your suggestion to specify the LicenseRef with the 3.0 versions as reference 
makes sense in any case, I think, assuming that this is in all combinations 
and it gives a clear and well-defined meaning for the versions, which matches 
the current license headers when combined with the ORed other versions.

> Regarding the second point: I fully agree and will do this. And I want to do
> this together with examples how to state the licenses correctly. However, I
> think, stating the examples for REUSE compatible license usage should best
> be put on a separate wiki page for better readability.

Great, makes sense to me.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>