pending tasks and loose ideas

flexible patterns

• test each pattern (not only the default combined pattern)
• add option to generate either minimal or maximal pattern
  • minimal: shortest coverage decisive of one or more objects.
  • distinct: shortest coverage to disambiguate from unrelated objects and objects it depends on, and large enough for dependent objects to disambiguate from it.
  • successive: minimal or distinct + surplus up until next ambiguation point
  • maximal: full coverage

misc

• Support adding custom patterns to enable frontend to to implement extensibility similar to license-reconsile https://lists.debian.org/87efl0kvzu.fsf@hands.com
• Support smarter processing:
  • Gather statistics on objects detected, to enable a frontend tool to emit progress during long-running scans
• Detect non-commercial license. (?i:(?:\w{4}|\W(?:[^oO]\w|\w[^rR]|[^aA]\w\w|\w[^nN]\w|\w\w[^dD])) non[-_ ]commercial)
• Detect bugroff license http://tunes.org/legalese/bugroff.html

See also

• Compare against competitors
  • ripper
  • https://salsa.debian.org/stuart/package-license-checker
  • r-base /share/licenses/license.db
  • license-reconcile
  • https://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightReviewTools
  • https://docs.clearlydefined.io/clearly#licensed
  • http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses
  • https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses
  • http://voag.linkedmodel.org/2.0/doc/2015/REFDATA_voag-licenses-v2.0.html
  • https://github.com/hierynomus/license-gradle-plugin
  • ruby-licensee - http://ben.balter.com/licensee/
  • flict - https://github.com/vinland-technology/flict

misc

• Optimize:

  • Support detection reversion, and first scan for grants then licenses - reverting embedded grants

• Test against challenging projects

  • ghostpdl
  • chromium
  • fpc
  • lazarus
  • boost
  • picolibc https://keithp.com/cgit/picolibc.git/

• Support smarter interogation

  • Provide methods to inspect position of detected objects to enable frontends to e.g. visualize using String::Tagged or Text::Locus

• Detect quality issues

  • incomplete: fractions of license fullref, but no complete fullref
  • alien: license label but no license name
  • uncertain: license ref and more unknown text in same sentence/paragraph/section
  • buried: license not at top of file
  • unstructured: license not at ideal place of data structure (e.g. in content or comment of html)
  • imperfect: license ref not following format documented in license fulltext

• use nano-style configurable wordchars/punct/brackets/matchbrackets chars and quotestr regex e.g. to determine sentences (see "paragraphs" and "justify" in "man nanorc")