For historical context, we went from "Perl" as the license tag, to the more accurate "GPL+ or Artistic". Then, when we determined after Jacobsen v. Katzer that Artistic was both unsafe and possibly not open source, I audited Fedora and removed any Artistic 1 only code that could not be relicensed upstream to the "same as perl" license (GPL+ or Artistic) or any other FOSS license (mostly Artistic 2.0). In that effort, I discovered that a notable number of upstream perl maintainers were unhappy with us describing their packages as "GPL+" only, insisting that even if Fedora didn't use the Artistic 1.0 license, they wanted it included.
Since I had many more pressing battles to fight, I left the perl modules with the technically correct (but functionally inconsistent) licensing tag. As we move to the new licensing syntax, I would say there is no reason to permit this ancient corner case.
~spot
On Tue, Jan 4, 2022 at 11:27 AM David Cantrell <dcantrell@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:46:44AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:22 AM Miroslav Suchý <msuchy@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> I want to clarify one thing I am working on. When I have this string in License tag in spec:
>>
>> Good License or Bad license
>>
>> Then the result is Good license and the package is allowed to be in Fedora, right?
>
>So first of all if I change your question to be about the actual
>underlying license terms of the package as opposed to the
>representation in the spec file, I believe the answer must be "yes"
>and there are probably a lot of examples of this in Fedora. (Think of
>any arbitrary package that says it's under some FOSS license and also
>says informally that proprietary licenses are also available.)
>
>With the spec file, though, I believe there is an inconsistency in how
>Fedora deals with this, but this is just a casual impression. On the
>one hand, there is the common case of traditionally-licensed Perl
>modules (typically, a dual license involving unversioned GPL and a
>license identified as the Artistic License 1.0 [which I realize exists
>in multiple forms, but let's ignore that]). Fedora spec files for such
>Perl module packages generally say something like "GPL or Artistic",
>even though Fedora classifies the Artistic License as a "bad" license.
>I *think* there may be other examples, not involving Perl modules or
>the Artistic License, where the code is dual licensed under a good
>license and a bad license and the spec file only gives the good
>license. The only rationale I could come up with for the difference in
>approach is that the Artistic License, while "bad" from Fedora's
>perspective, is generally seen as plausibly-FOSS (it's an OSI-approved
>license, for one thing).
>
>I think it comes down to whether Fedora wants to have spec files that
>say, for example, "GPL or Proprietary" much as it has spec files that
>say "GPL or Artistic".
It's true there is inconsistency regarding the License tag in the spec
file. As the package maintainer and as part of the Fedora project, I
would prefer that the License tag in the spec reflect the license
terms that we are distributing the built package against. So in the
case of Perl modules that are generally GPL or Artistic, the Fedora
project is really redistributing them under the terms of the GPL only,
right?
Does it follow that we [Fedora] take an open source project that is
dual licensed and use the license that is acceptable in our project
and redistribute under those terms? Is that even a thing one can do?
Given the "or" usage, my assumption is yes. The author is giving the
downstream user the choice of using that work under the terms of the
GPL or the terms of the Artistic license. In the case of Fedora,
we've deemed Artistic undesirable which means our use of the modules
is technically under the terms of the GPL.
For me, I would prefer to see this reflected in the License tags in
spec files so we can see how we're integrating components in to
Fedora. If we note a license that we can't use or that we are not
using, it makes it harder to see at a glance _what_ terms actually
apply to that component. And that makes it harder for other packagers
looking for license-compatible dependencies.
I realize this is yet another work project and also that I may be
incorrect regarding what we can and can't do with regard to
dual-licensed projects. If we are unable to say "we're using the Perl
modules under the terms of the GPL" and exclude the Artistic license,
then really the "or" boolean doesn't apply and it's really always
"and".
So many licenses, so many questions....
--
David Cantrell <dcantrell@xxxxxxxxxx>
Red Hat, Inc. | Boston, MA | EST5EDT
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