Re: Licensing of licenses

Quoting [email protected] (2026-05-17 08:54:08)
> The resue-tool itself "ignores" license files when validating the 
> SPDX-compliance of a project.
> As some of you pointed out it is tricky to add a license to a license 
> file. So why not exclude license files from lintian (and other similiar 
> tools) and modify the Debian policy accordingly.
> Adding a license to a license feels like a workaround to me.
> 
> On the other hand, "reuse-tool" does not recognize "d/copyright" as a 
> license file, so it warns if there is no license for that file. 
> Therefore, "spdx2debian" currently generates a license file for it using 
> "CC0-1.0" as license and "None" as copyright holder. It is also a 
> workaround.

Your question applies equally well to your own tool, it seems:

Why not exclude debian/copyright from "reuse-tool" coverage, instead of
bogusly and confusingly inventing a licensing that noone granted?

My guess is that your workaround was done to make the computed result
appear perfect.  That seems to me to be the exact same reason for the
question raised in this thread.

I maintain the tool "licensecheck" and chose to not invent licensing or
copyright, but instead add FIXMEs to the produces output. Other tools
has then emerged which takes the licensecheck output and "improves" it
by stripping those FIXMEs :-)

 - Jonas

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