Advertise version: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH or MAJOR.MINOR ?

[bact]

Continuing discussion from SPDX Tech Team Meeting 2024-07-16:

From the ontology point of view:

• An object https://spdx.org/a/3.0.x/b is not the same as an object https://spdx.org/a/3.0.y/b

For spec publication:

• If using MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, we can make:
  • v3.0 as an alias that point to the latest version of v3.0.x (for example, v3.0.1)
  • v3 as an alias that point to the latest version of v3.x (for example, v3.0)
  • For example,
    • we can set mike alias -u v3.0.1 v3.0 v3 latest (set "v3.0", "v3", and "latest" as aliases for "v3.0.1")
    • then when we have 3.1, we can set mike alias -u v3.1 v3 latest (set "v3" and "latest" as aliases for "v3.1")
    • v3.0 will still redirect to v3.0.1, while v3 will now redirect to v3.1
• If using MAJOR.MINOR,
  • Any patch update for v3.0 (v3.0.1, v3.0.2, etc) will be publish under v3.0
  • (at 3.0.0) mike alias -u v3.0 v3 latest
  • (at 3.0.1) mike alias -u v3.0 v3 latest (keep using "v3.0")
  • (at 3.0.2) mike alias -u v3.0 v3 latest (keep using "v3.0")
  • (at 3.1) mike alias -u v3.1 v3 latest (change to "v3.1")

Current decision is to use MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.

See also

• https://github.com/spdx/spdx-3-model/issues/733
• https://github.com/spdx/spdx-3-model/pull/800
• https://github.com/spdx/spdx-spec/pull/936

[zvr]

The statement in first bullet is not accurate, as we may as well declare that https://spdx.org/a/3.0.x/b is the same as https://spdx.org/a/3.0.y/b in the ontology.

[goneall]

The statement in first bullet is not accurate, as we may as well declare that https://spdx.org/a/3.0.x/b is the same as https://spdx.org/a/3.0.y/b in the ontology.

This would be a good use of owl:sameAs. Note that this will require a reasoner for some ontology tools is isn't quite as straightforward as just using the same URI. Since I missed the tech call where this was discussed, I won't re-open the discussion, but we should add the owl:sameAs clauses otherwise many of the RDF and linked data utilities will get confused on every patch version.

[goneall]

• We decided to keep the "3.0" references on the public website and redirect to the latest patch release.
• The MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH is for IRIs like https://spdx.org/rdf/3.0.1/spdx-context.jsonld
• For the website https://spdx.dev/use/specifications/ we've not included the patch version previously (reference 2.2.1), so we will just redirect to the latest version
• For actual RDF ontology and JSON schemas, we will maintain the patch level version but will redirect the 3.0 to the latest patch version