dev-manual: licenses: mention SPDX for license compliance

(From yocto-docs rev: a34626dd59617a32f6c20aa9ac11f15db2795a75)

Signed-off-by: Michael Opdenacker <michael.opdenacker@bootlin.com>
CC: Joshua Watt <JPEWhacker@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>

1 files changed, 22 insertions, 8 deletions

diff --git a/documentation/dev-manual/licenses.rst b/documentation/dev-manual/licenses.rst
index f28baf57d1..3b9190d47f 100644
--- a/documentation/dev-manual/licenses.rst
+++ b/documentation/dev-manual/licenses.rst
@@ -305,14 +305,28 @@ There are other requirements beyond the scope of these three and the
 methods described in this section (e.g. the mechanism through which
 source code is distributed).
 
-As different organizations have different methods of complying with open
-source licensing, this section is not meant to imply that there is only
-one single way to meet your compliance obligations, but rather to
-describe one method of achieving compliance. The remainder of this
-section describes methods supported to meet the previously mentioned
-three requirements. Once you take steps to meet these requirements, and
-prior to releasing images, sources, and the build system, you should
-audit all artifacts to ensure completeness.
+As different organizations have different ways of releasing software,
+there can be multiple ways of meeting license obligations. At
+least, we describe here two methods for achieving compliance:
+
+-  The first method is to use OpenEmbedded's ability to provide
+   the source code, provide a list of licenses, as well as
+   compilation scripts and source code modifications.
+
+   The remainder of this section describes supported methods to meet
+   the previously mentioned three requirements.
+
+-  The second method is to generate a *Software Bill of Materials*
+   (:term:`SBoM`), as described in the ":doc:`/dev-manual/sbom`" section.
+   Not only do you generate :term:`SPDX` output which can be used meet
+   license compliance requirements (except for sharing the build system
+   and layers sources for the time being), but this output also includes
+   component version and patch information which can be used
+   for vulnerability assessment.
+
+Whatever method you choose, prior to releasing images, sources,
+and the build system, you should audit all artifacts to ensure
+completeness.
 
 .. note::