aboutcode-org / aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit

Improve the license_clarity_score logic for conflicting_license_categories

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#3,622 5 Kommentare 0 Reaktionen 2 zugewiesene Personen Beansprucht von @AyanSinhaMahapatra Auf GitHub ansehen
bug license_clarity_score
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In a recent scan of VictoriaMetrics-1.93.9.tar.gz from https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/archive/refs/tags/v1.93.9.tar.gz I noticed that the value of `conflicting_license_categories` was set to true for this package, which has an overall license of apache-2.0. A perusal of the other detected licenses in the package showed that there are some files licensed under ofl-1.1 which is currently assigned a category of "Copyleft Limited" in the LicenseDB. It did not seem fair or correct to me that code with this license should trigger a "conflicting" condition on the overall project, since in any practical sense the ofl-1.1 should not have any license compliance impact on the use of the project, other than the usual attribution requirements.

I discovered more information about that at https://apache.org/legal/resolved.html#weak-copyleft-licenses where the official Apache guidelines inform us that it is OK to include "weak copyleft" licenses in an apache-licensed project, including the ofl-1.1. This encouraged me to conclude that code licensed under a"Copyleft Limited" (weak copyleft) license should NOT trigger a `conflicting_license_categories` condition when used in a project with an overall permissive license. That condition should only result from code under "Copyleft" (strong copyleft) or proprietary/commercial licenses. I think the license_clarity_score logic should be improved to reflect that.

We should also improve the description of `conflicting_license_categories` wherever it is presented to specify "strong copyleft" rather than just "copyleft" as follows:

"When true, indicates the declared license expression of the software is in the permissive category, but that other potentially conflicting categories, such as strong copyleft and proprietary, have been detected in lower level code. Scoring Weight = -20 (note negative weight)."

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