r131 - /web/deps/dep5.mdwn

[vorlon at users.alioth.debian.org]

Author: vorlon
Date: Thu Dec 17 15:26:37 2009
New Revision: 131

URL: http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/dep/?sc=1&rev=131
Log:
clarify that the license short names are reserved and must only be used for
these licenses, and spell out the rules for implementors to safely rely on
the meaning of these tokens

Modified:
    web/deps/dep5.mdwn

Modified: web/deps/dep5.mdwn
URL: http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/dep/web/deps/dep5.mdwn?rev=131&op=diff
==============================================================================
--- web/deps/dep5.mdwn (original)
+++ web/deps/dep5.mdwn Thu Dec 17 15:26:37 2009
@@ -247,6 +247,18 @@
 correlate the licenses of multiple pieces of software.  To that end, this
 spec defines standard short names for a number of commonly used licenses,
 which can be used in the first line of a "`License`" field.
+
+These short names have the specified meanings across all uses of this file
+format, and *must not* be used to refer to any other licenses.  Parsers may
+thus rely on these short names referring to the same licenses wherever they
+occur, without needing to parse or compare the full license text.
+
+From time to time, licenses may be added to or removed from the list of
+standard short names.  Such changes in the list of short names will always
+be accompanied by changes to the recommended `Format-Specification` value.
+Implementors who are parsing copyright files should take care not to assume
+anything about the meaning of license short names for unknown
+`Format-Specification` versions.
 
 For licenses which have multiple versions in use, the version number is
 added, using a dash as a separator. If omitted, the lowest version number is