# RFC: REUSE compliance plugin for PkgTemplates.jl — API, docs, and root LICENSE behavior

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-reuse-compliance-plugin-for-pkgtemplates-jl-api-docs-and-root-license-behavior/136981
**Category:** Package Management
**Tags:** pkg, licenses, pkgtemplates
**Created:** [May 4, 2026, 2:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-reuse-compliance-plugin-for-pkgtemplates-jl-api-docs-and-root-license-behavior/136981 "2026-05-04T14:56:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 10

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![gwr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gwr/32/33632_2.png) [@gwr](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gwr)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2026, 4:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-reuse-compliance-plugin-for-pkgtemplates-jl-api-docs-and-root-license-behavior/136981/10 "2026-05-04T16:06:19Z")

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So something like:

```markdown
SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR LicenseRef-Gov-Public-Domain

```

is what you are saying? (here we cannot use my simple check)

That seems mechanically checkable once the SPDX expression has been parsed into a normalized expression.

For a first conservative RegistryCI rule, one could evaluate each file’s effective SPDX expression as a Boolean expression:

- standard SPDX license with `isOsiApproved == true` → `true`;
- non-OSI license or `LicenseRef-*` → `false`;
- `OR` → Boolean OR;
- `AND` → Boolean AND;
- `WITH` exceptions could initially be treated as `false`, or later handled by a separate allow-list / known-SPDX-exception policy.

Then `MIT OR LicenseRef-X` evaluates to `true`, while `MIT AND LicenseRef-X` evaluates to `false`.

So the rule would not have to be “all mentioned licenses must be OSI-approved”. It could instead be: every distributed file must have at least one complete OSI-approved licensing path.

(The [plugin tooling returns SPDX AST](https://bsl-support.de/pkgtemplates-reuse-preview/developer/#SPDX-Support-Internals) for SPDX license expressions…).

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