LICENSE-VALIDATE(1)

📦
version 31 · 3 versions
, in epel 10, epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 LICENSE-VALIDATE(1) 💖

okay bestie, so the manual name here is License Validate — it's the license-validate command, and she is that girl for checking the License tag in your SPEC file. let's get into it 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

license-validate — validates the string in the License tag in the SPEC file 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

license-validate [-h] [--old] [--file FILE] [--package PACKAGE]
[--verbose] license

positional arguments: license license string. E.g., 'GPL or MIT'.

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

  • -h, --help — show the help message and dip out. that's it, that's the whole vibe ✨
  • --file FILE — read the grammar from this file instead. the default is /usr/share/fedora-license-data/grammar.lark. and — plot twist — if that default doesn't exist, the script reads ./full-grammar.lark instead. lowkey iconic of her to have a backup plan 🫶
  • --old — validate using old Fedora's shortnames. otherwise an SPDX expression is assumed. pick your era, bestie 💀
  • --package PACKAGE — you can optionaly pass the name of the package (that's the name of the src.rpm). normally, when a package uses a not-allowed license, license-validate prints an error and exits with a non-zero code. BUT if PACKAGE is known to use an otherwise not-allowed license as an exception, then license-validate does not print an error and exits with a zero status code. exceptions, she has them 👑
  • --verbose, -v — print more human friendly messages. otherwise she just exits with error code zero if the license is valid, otherwise with error code 1 if the license is invalid. no small talk, just numbers 😌

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

validates whether license is in the approved set for the distribution. vibe check passed or not, no cap ⭐

🚨 real talk though: this script does not check source files, and does not check whether the license is actually correct. for that purpose you may use licensecheck. she's not out here doing forensics, she's doing a grammar check 💅

🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

Miroslav Suchý <msuchy@redhat.com> — legend behaviour, fr fr 💖

and that's the whole page, bestie! 🎀 this was license-validate, part of the License Validate manual, version dated 06/17/2026 — mwah, slay, periodt ✨💅🦋

📦 where this page comes from