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ReuseLicensing.jl

ReuseLicensing.jl provides core infrastructure for working with REUSE and SPDX licensing metadata in Julia projects. It parses SPDX license expressions, extracts referenced licenses, exceptions, and LicenseRef-* identifiers, checks whether an expression has an approved licensing path, and supports REUSE compliance workflows based on reuse lint --json and reuse spdx.

The package is developed by BSL Management Support as part of a broader commitment to transparent open source infrastructure, clear licensing metadata, responsible software stewardship, and practical software independence.

Scope

ReuseLicensing is intended to support:

  • parsing and normalizing SPDX license expressions,
  • querying a checked-in SPDX License List snapshot,
  • checking SPDX expressions against explicit approval policies,
  • consuming reuse lint --json and reuse spdx output,
  • validating and updating package-level licensing metadata for Julia packages,
  • recording Manifest.toml snapshots as licensing evidence.

The package is general Julia infrastructure. It is not specific to BSL Management Support's modeling and simulation work.

Package-Level Licensing

ReuseLicensing distinguishes package-level licensing from file-level licensing.

Package-level functions, such as set_package_license!(), set_package_copyright!(), and adopt_package_licensing!(), manage the authoritative package-level licensing state recorded in the root LICENSE file and in the [reuse_licensing] table of Project.toml.

File-Level Licensing

File-level licensing remains repository-owned. SPDX notices, REUSE.toml, LICENSES/, and related repository layout choices can be edited directly by package authors according to the REUSE specification.

ReuseLicensing can consume REUSE tool output and support repository-level checks, but it does not treat REUSE.toml or README prose as the source of truth for the package-level outbound license declaration.

Status

The package is in active development. Public APIs may still change while the core abstractions are refined.

Installation

using Pkg
Pkg.add("ReuseLicensing")

The source code and issue tracker are available in the GitHub repository.

ReuseLicensing can parse SPDX expressions and inspect its checked-in SPDX snapshot without external tools. Functions that inspect repository-level REUSE metadata or check REUSE compliance call the reuse executable from the reuse-tool project, so reuse must be available on PATH for those workflows.

For example, on macOS with Homebrew:

brew install reuse

In Python-based environments and CI jobs:

python -m pip install "reuse[charset-normalizer]"

Documentation

  • SPDX Core: parse SPDX license expressions and query bundled SPDX License List data.
  • Approval Layers: check SPDX expressions against explicit approval policies.
  • Package Licensing: manage package-level license declarations in Project.toml and LICENSE.

REUSE Specification Version

ReuseLicensing records the REUSE specification version it is based on.

using ReuseLicensing
reuse_specification_version()
"3.3"

Index