Scope

The System Package Data Exchange (SPDX®) specification defines an open standard for communicating bill of materials (BOM) information for different topic areas.

SPDX defines an underlying data model as well as multiple serialization formats to encode that data model.

SPDX metadata includes details about creation and distribution, including the following:

  • software composition, for collections of software (Packages), individual Files, and portions of files (Snippets)
  • software build information
  • artificial intelligence (AI) models
  • datasets
  • creator, supplier and distributor identity information
  • provenance and integrity
  • licenses and copyrights, including a curated list of licenses and exceptions
  • security vulnerabilities, defects, and other quality data
  • relationships between system elements
  • software usage and lifecycle
  • mechanisms to enable annotating SPDX elements and linking between multiple SPDX Documents