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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: CMake source files without license
From:       Andreas Cord-Landwehr <cordlandwehr () kde ! org>
Date:       2020-06-27 13:46:28
Message-ID: 29530998.JNUMKjYyMa () weatherwax
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[...]
>   SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
> sounds like a great idea for default default CMakeLists.txt header

Hi, actually we already have that statement in our KDE licensing policy [1] 
since several years that CMake files shall be licensed under BSD. The policy 
defaults to BSD-2-Clause and supports BSD-3-Clause as an opt-in option, 
though.

The main point here is probably that often developers omit the licensing tag 
because they feel the code to be under the limit of being copyrightable. 
However, that becomes as problem as soon as the file size and complexity 
increases and one has to research the contributors. Moreover, for tooling to 
test correct licensing this is a major problem.

Thus, I think it would be an excellent idea to aim to always state a license 
for every file in our repositories, which in particular includes the 
CMakeLists.txt files. This is actually also what the REUSE specification 
suggests us to do [2].

Cheers,
Andreas

[1] https://community.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy
[2] reuse.software


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