chore: switch to SPDX license headers#4533
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lzchen merged 16 commits intoopen-telemetry:mainfrom May 7, 2026
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Replace the Apache 2.0 license header with the 2-line SPDX equivalent across all Python files. Add a CI check to enforce the header on new files going forward. Closes open-telemetry#4521 Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
The generate script template already adds a newline after the header, so the template file must not end with one. Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
tammy-baylis-swi
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Thanks!
This duplicates #4532 but also includes a workflow update. Not sure how you'd like to proceed, @MikeGoldsmith !
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tammy-baylis-swi
approved these changes
May 5, 2026
Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
lzchen
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May 6, 2026
GitHub uses this file to hide bulk formatting commits from blame views. The SHA may need updating if this PR is squash-merged. Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
…mike/spdx-license-headers
…mike/spdx-license-headers
lmolkova
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May 7, 2026
Files added to main after the initial migration. Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6
…mike/spdx-license-headers
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Summary
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0) across all Python filesscripts/check_license_header.pyenforcement script andlint-license-header-checktox env to catch missing headers in CIscripts/license_header.txttemplate to use SPDX format.git-blame-ignore-revsfile to hide this bulk change from GitHub blame views590 files had their existing Apache header replaced with the SPDX equivalent. During the migration, 85 files were found with missing headers and 15 files had non-standard header variants:
Copyright 2020, OpenTelemetry Authors) — normalized toCopyright The OpenTelemetry AuthorsAll now have the correct SPDX header. Third-party copyrights (Google LLC, Amazon) are preserved with SPDX on line 2.
Motivation
Other OTel SDKs and the Python core SDK have already adopted SPDX headers:
Closes #4521
Notes
__init__.pyfiles are excluded from the check# Copyrightline (to support third-party copyrights like Google LLC, Amazon) followed by# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0Follow-up
.git-blame-ignore-revsis included with a placeholder — a follow-up PR will update it with the squash-merge commit SHA once this PR is merged.