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--- faq [2016/09/09 12:55]
Michael Jaeger
+++ faq [2016/09/09 15:21] (current)
Michael Jaeger
@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 ===== License Handling =====
-**What happens if some parts of the wording in the license are changed. Is the deviation not recognized, is it highlighted or listed as an unclassified license?**
+----
-Yes, the deviation is recognized. Using coloured highlighting, the user ca see additions, removals and modifications from the reference license text in the database. An example is shown below.
+**Quite often I have seen that NOMOS is mentioned. I can’t find detailed information about NOMOS. What is NOMOS?**
-{{:036_oss_fossy_20160909_screenshot_monk_highlight_example.png?300|}}
+Admitted, there is not a single comprehensive documentation about Nomos, but it scattered accross the github wiki and the olderpages. In addtion some reports publish contain information about Nomos. Nomos is based on regular expression matching, but it is clearly more than that:
-(Grey areas are added after screenshot to provide just an example, but not a concrete case)
+  * Nomos maintains a hierarchy of regular expressions, to reuse regular experession among license families, e.g. some are targeting GPL in general, while others directly identify GPL 2.0.
+  * Nomos filters out comment characters and optimizes matches by cleaning the text before processing.
+  * Nomos uses "seedwords" to identify license relevant sections in larger text files to accelerate processing of large uploads.
+  * Nomos analyses the occurrences of "seedwords" to eliminate false positives, when it comes to license relevant text recognition. For example, the term ''distribution'' is license relevant, however, also part of many technical writings. As such, looking for ''distribute'' or ''distribiution'' only in comment text would lead to many false positives.
+----
+**Assume license texts or commercial license information not being part of the FOSSology licenses, will they appear in the reporting or SPDX file export?**
+Generally, the search for licenses is not limited to known licenses but license relevant text. The scan results just in an ''unknown license''.
+And yes, such information will be put in an SPDX report. The user must select the referring license text. The user can attach this to the file as individual conclusion. Or, the user creates a new license text entry, if the license text is covering multiple files. In both cases, this license text is part of the export.
+----
+**Does the license list go in accordance with the license list of SPDX? Is there deviation between SPDX and FOSSology?**
+FOSSology recognizes more licenses than the SPDX license list contains because over the years the developers have contributed a few more texts than what is covered today in the SPDX license list. Besides, FOSSology uses the same license short names for all those licenses that are on the SPDX license list as well. On the long term, the SPDX license list and the set of licenses of the FOSSology distribution should be the same.
+----
+**What happens if some parts of the wording in the license are changed: Is the deviation not recognized, is it highlighted or listed as an unclassified license?**
+Yes, the deviation is recognized. Using colored highlighting, the user can see additions, removals and modifications from the reference license text in the database. In addition, it is shown how many percent of the tokens (=basically words) are equal when compared to the reference text. An example is shown below.
+{{:036_oss_fossy_20160909_screenshot_monk_highlight_example.png?500|}}
+----
 **Using FOSSology, do we get a list of all FOSS licenses?**

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