From: Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackryan@...>
Date: 2011-06-26T04:51:55+09:00
Subject: Re: SPDX (and the glazing of ones eyes)

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Intransition <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think a better approach would be a simple dependency code list. They
> already have the codes. So you just pick yours, maybe pick them up
> automatically from your dependencies list, and feed them into a web
> api and it spits out the full text of a license conforming to all of
> them, or reports an incompatibility issue and it's details.

And how do you propose such a dependency list is generated? Remember
that you have to conform to several, very different, national laws
concerning corporate governance and reporting.

> Maybe I missing the point, but I think generating this XML is going to
> prove a nightmare

As much as any sort of XML generation will be a nightmare.

> probably won't work half-the time

That's the implementor's fault. Skimming the spec, it's well formed,
and actually a *good* use of XML as it was intended.

Of course, the trick is generating the proper licensing, but that's
left as an exercise for the reader: This is definitely a data-exchange
format, not storage.

> will waste lots of disk space

Yeah, I really need a way to fill up the remaining 100 GB on my
internal 500GB HD... ;)

Point being: Unless you are stuck on tiny HDs (smaller than your
average SSD these days), disk space is a non-issue. Your average "one
file per class" approach wastes much more diskspace than this would
(on NTFS, the smallest block size is 4KB, which means anything that's
smaller than 4KB is lost. This is worse on *NIX filesystems with
inodes).

> and what the hell is anyone going to do with the XML
> once they have it anyway?

Avoid loads of fines, and / or bills for licensing of supposedly
unlicensed software. The only time you don't have to deal with
licensing compliance as a corporation is when you are dogfooding. As
soon as you buy something external, you'll have to manage your
licenses.

> Really this looks like nothing more that a
> new "hype-tech" to push high $$$ asset management apps (that will
> basically just do what the web api I just mentioned will).

Yeah, those apps actually exist already:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=license+management+software

That's because there's a a real need to manage the licensing of
workstations and servers. Nobody is going to do this by hand, since
these sort of things are what we invented computers for to start with.

-- 
Phillip Gawlowski

A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start,
and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
               -- Leibniz