# Potential improvements to the repository's license file content

[LicenseProliferation]

New Feature / Enhancement Checklist

• I am not disclosing a vulnerability.
• I am not just asking a question.
• I have searched through existing issues.

Current Limitation

Hi developers,

We are a research group studying open-source license proliferation.

When collecting customized licenses of repositories through the GitHub REST API, we found that the license content in parse-community_Parse-SDK-iOS-OSX appears to be non-empty, but the detected license type is NOASSERTION.
(https://api.github.com/repos/parse-community/Parse-SDK-iOS-OSX/license)

"license": {
"key": "other",
"name": "Other",
"spdx_id": "NOASSERTION"
}

This usually means that GitHub found the LICENSE file by its name, but the LICENSEE tool couldn't recognize the license type.

This issue is also visible in the overview section of the repository page.

Current repository metadata

Example metadata for a repository using a standard SPDX license

Why this happened

• The use of a non-SPDX license or a license template that doesn't fully align with the SPDX standard.

Feature / Enhancement Description

Suggested remediation

We recommend adopting the standard BSD-3-Clause license as the project-level license for your repository.

See: https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause.html

Copyright (c) 2015-present, Parse, LLC. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2017-present, parse-community organization

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

 * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
   list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

 * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
   and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

 * Neither the name Parse nor the names of its contributors may be used to
   endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific
   prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Option 2 — SPDX license + exception

If you find that the existing SPDX licenses do not meet your licensing requirements, another more standardized approach is to use a standard SPDX license along with explicit license exception(s).

For example, your license could potentially be expressed as:

BSD-3-Clause + exception

Example Exceptions:

• Transfer or assign agreement: "...has transferred this code to the parse-community organization..."

Acknowledgment

We fully respect maintainers' license choices and are only sharing this observation in case it is useful.

Thank you for maintaining parse-community_Parse-SDK-iOS-OSX.

[parse-github-assistant]

🚀 Thanks for opening this issue! We are excited about your ideas for improvement!