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Formally allow using .license files with Commentable Files #123
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LGTM |
mxmehl
approved these changes
Feb 16, 2023
Before this change, the explanation of comment headers and .license was rather verbose because there was no concise way to say “plain text file that can contain comments” or “not a plain text file or does not permit the inclusion of comments”. This change adds terms to the glossary so that the explanations of comment headers and .license files could be shortened. In the next commit, I’m going to add another reference to Commentable Files. That’s the main motivation behind this change. I want to be able to talk about Commentable Files without having to repeat the phrase “plain text file that can contain comments”.
Dave Winer’s Rules for standards-makers says “If practice deviates from the spec, change the spec” [1]. If a spec says to do one thing but everyone does something else, then that rule in the spec is more of a distraction then anything else. Before this change, the REUSE Spec said “To implement this method, each Commentable File MUST contain comments at the top of the file (comment header) that declare that file's Copyright and Licensing Information.” As far as I know, there’s no piece of software that actually enforces that requirement. For example, try running “reuse lint” on this repository: <https://github.com/Jayman2000/reuse-compliance-test>. The REUSE Tool will tell you that you’re compliant with the REUSE Spec, even though there’s a .py.license file (The Python file itself could have just contained a comment header). This change aligns the REUSE Spec with actual practice by making this requirement a SHOULD instead of a MUST. For the avoidance of doubt, this change also explicitly says that “.license files MAY be used with Commentable Files”. The phrase “but it is still RECOMMENDED that comment headers be put inside Commentable Files” was inspired by this comment: <fsfe#122 (comment)> Fixes fsfe#122. [1]: <http://scripting.com/2017/05/09/rulesForStandardsmakers.html>
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mxmehl
approved these changes
Mar 6, 2023
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Fixes #122.