SPDX IDs?

[enyst]

Can we use SPDX IDs for licenses, for software and CC licenses at least?

It will need file names changes, since IDs are file names. So the question is about renaming the affected files to [SPDX_ID].json and accordingly .js.

I think there will be benefits in machine readability. In addition, license ids from opensource.org have changed to SPDX names. This includes also a split of "BSD licenses" in 2-clause and 3-clause: in the records here, there is only one, on opensource.org there are two. And many licenses, more than half, I believe, were renamed in a standardized way, for example from "mozilla" to "MPL-1.0".

Switching to SPDX names in the OKFN service would also solve for longer term a bug with the scraper at this time: the scrape.py script doesn't find a number of OSI licenses it has (because they're named SPDXy now), so the current implementation will add duplicates.

OTOH, I'm not sure if redirections for the older names (current names) would be necessary. If you're ok with the switch, will the site need to continue to serve both?

[mlinksva]

I 100% endorse using SPDX names.

Have asked in past whether there are existing users depending on specific naming and don't recall a definite answer, but that may be forgetfulness on my part. @rgrp can object if he wishes. :) Go ahead and implement, and thanks for all your contributions!

[jonasob]

This seems like a very wholesome approach that should be implemented, clearly :-)

[mlinksva]

I'm closing this as it was partially done, completion now tracked in #35