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User:Seabass-labrax/Software Package Data Exchange

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Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) is an open standard for software bill of materials (SBOM).[1] SPDX allows the expression of components, licenses, copyrights, security references and other metadata relating to software.[2] Its original purpose was to improve license compliance,[3] and has since been expanded to facilitate additional use-cases, such as supply-chain transparency and security.[4] SPDX is authored by the community-driven SPDX Project under the auspices of the Linux Foundation.

The current version of the standard is 2.2.[5]

Version history

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The current version of the standard is 2.2 and was ratified in May 2020.[6]

The version 2.1 was ratified in November 2016.[7]

License syntax

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Each license is identified by a full name, such as "Mozilla Public License 2.0" and a short identifier, here "MPL-2.0". Licenses can be combined by operators AND and OR, and grouping (, ).

For example, (Apache-2.0 OR MIT) means that one can choose between Apache-2.0 (Apache License) or MIT (MIT license). On the other hand, (Apache-2.0 AND MIT) means that both licenses apply.

There is also a "+" operator, when applied to a license, means that future versions of the license apply as well. For example, Apache-1.1+ means that Apache-1.1 and Apache-2.0 may apply (and future versions if any).

In 2020, the European Commission publishes its Joinup Licensing Assistant,[8] which makes possible the selection and comparison of more than 50 licenses, with access to their SPDX identifier and full text.

Deprecated license identifiers

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The GNU family of licenses (e.g., GNU General Public License 2.0) have the choice of choosing a later version of the license built in. Sometimes, it was not clear, whether the SPDX expression GPL-2.0 meant "exactly GPL version 2.0" or "GPL version 2.0 or any later version".[9] Thus, since version 3.0 of the SPDX License List, the GNU family of licenses got new names.[10] GPL-2.0-only means "exactly version 2.0" and GPL-2.0-or-later means "version 2.0 or any later version".

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Stewart, Kate (May 25, 2021). "SPDX: It's Already in Use for Global Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and Supply Chain Security". Linux Foundation. Retrieved 2021-08-13.
  2. ^ "Survey of Existing SBOM Formats and Standards" (PDF). National Telecommunications and Information Administration. October 25, 2019. p. 9. Retrieved 2021-08-13.
  3. ^ Bridgwater, Adrian (August 19, 2011). "Linux Foundation eases open source licensing woes". Computer Weekly. Retrieved 2021-08-13.
  4. ^ Rushgrove, Gareth (June 16, 2021). "Advancing SBOM standards: Snyk and SPDX". Retrieved 2021-08-14.
  5. ^ "SPDX Current version". spdx.dev. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
  6. ^ "General Meeting/Minutes/2020-05-07 - SPDX Wiki". wiki.spdx.org. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
  7. ^ "General Meeting/Minutes/2016-11-03 - SPDX Wiki". wiki.spdx.org.
  8. ^ "Joinup Licensing Assistant". Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  9. ^ Richard Stallman. "For Clarity's Sake, Please Don't Say "Licensed under GNU GPL 2"!". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 2018-05-24.
  10. ^ Jilayne Lovejoy. "License List 3.0 Released!". spdx.org. Retrieved 2018-05-24.
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Category:Computer standards Category:Linux Foundation projects