Simplifying copyright using SPDX IDs

Speaker: Stephan Lachnit

Track: Packaging, policy, and Debian infrastructure

Type: Short talk (20 minutes)

Room: Talks

Time: Aug 29 (Sat): 15:30

Duration: 0:20

When packaging bigger projects, Debian’s copyright files can get really messy, especially when licenses with long texts are being used, for example the Creative Commons licenses. While the debian/copyright file is technically human- and machine-readable, in practice this is not always the case. Using SPDX license identifiers, copyright attribution can be compressed, while being as precise as before, but easier readable for both humans and machines. In this talk I will give a short introduction into using SPDX and want to start a discussion about a possible copyright format 2.0 using SPDX license identifiers.