# 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:** 18

<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 5, 2026, 9:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-reuse-compliance-plugin-for-pkgtemplates-jl-api-docs-and-root-license-behavior/136981/18 "2026-05-05T09:15:18Z")

</div>

> [@tecosaur](#):
>
> REUSE itself mentions `/LICENSE` files in it’s FAQ under “traditional licensing”, and to paraphrase, it currently says “why not just do both?”.

Yes, pragmatically we can do both for Julia packages intended for General. That is also what I would implement as the default.

But I do not think this is conceptually neutral. Once a project uses REUSE to describe file-level licensing, a conventional root `LICENSE` file becomes a coarse compatibility artifact. If `LICENSES/` contains several license texts, a human reader may easily treat the root `LICENSE` file as the authoritative project license, even though the actual licensing state is described by SPDX headers, `REUSE.toml`, and `LICENSES/`.

In a fully REUSE-oriented setup with multiple licenses, I would rather expect a root `LICENSE` file to be a pointer, e.g.

```julia-auto
LICENSE
    "This project is REUSE-compliant.
     See LICENSES/, SPDX headers, and REUSE.toml for actual licensing."

```

But I understand that this would not satisfy current General registry expectations.

A future RegistryCI check could in principle go further and check whether each distributed file has an OSI-approved licensing path, as [sketched above](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-reuse-compliance-plugin-for-pkgtemplates-jl-api-docs-and-root-license-behavior/136981/10). I understand that this is not likely to happen immediately, but it remains the technically cleaner model in my opinion.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-reuse-compliance-plugin-for-pkgtemplates-jl-api-docs-and-root-license-behavior/136981)._