License Conflation

[DanielJDufour]

Expected Behavior

Licenses that are the same should have the same name in the repo metadata. Came up in addressing #543

Current Behavior

License names aren't standardized. For example, the license could be CC0 or Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Possible Solution

• Enforce License Standardization in code.json like what NPMJS does for their package.json
  • https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json#license
  • https://spdx.org/licenses/
• When harvesting, map possible license values in code.json to SPDX term

Steps to Reproduce (for bugs)

• https://beta.observablehq.com/@danieljdufour/licenses-of-projects-on-code-gov

Context

This makes it difficult for users to determine the distribution of licenses across code.gov

Caveats

• We have to balance the needs to standardize license names while allowing agencies flexibility to specify their license.