Help identifying licenses

Help identifying licenses

[Jesse Gibbons]

I'm working on packaging for Guix the filters package found in debian (home
page <http://joeyh.name/code/filters/>). It involves a lot of different
licenses, and I'm not sure what to put for two of them in particular:

1. newspeak
The author says bsd-like. I don't see any clauses or yelling. What should I
put for it? Here's the relevant snippet from debian/copyright:

Files: newspeak.l
Copyright: 1991 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>
License: other-4
 The newspeak filter is now relicensed under a BSD-like copyright. Its
 author established the new copyright in this email:
 .
  From: Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>
  Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 16:17:02 -0700
  To: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>
  Subject: Re: copyright of newspeak filter
 .
  Hey there -- I'm cleaning out old mail, and don't remember if I replied
  to this or not.  Anyway, in case I didn't -- feel free to slap this 
  license atop the newspeak script (it's BSD-like, so that should work
  for you.)
 .
        Copyright (c) 1991 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>
 .
        Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this 
        software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted
        without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in
        all copies and that both that copyright notice and this
        permission notice appear in supporting documentation.  No
        representations are made about the suitability of this software
        for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or
        implied warranty.

2. Kenny
The author says Artistic as found on debian in /usr/share/common-
licenses/Artistic. It is not found in (guix licenses), and sincee I do not
run debian from that era I cannot compare the text to verify the license's
identity. Here's the relevant snippet from debian/copyright:

Files: kenny
Copyright:
  2001 Christian Garbs <mitch@cgarbs.de>
  2002 Alan Eldridge <alane@geeksrus.net>
License: Artistic
 On Debian systems, the full text of the Artistic license can be found in
 /usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic


Thanks for the help,
-- 
-Jesse

Re: Help identifying licenses

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1072 bytes --]

Jesse,

Jesse Gibbons 写道：
> 1. newspeak
> The author says bsd-like. I don't see any clauses or 
> yelling. What should I
> put for it? Here's the relevant snippet from debian/copyright:

This is the ‘Expat’ licence, often ambiguously called ‘MIT’.

> 2. Kenny
> The author says Artistic as found on debian in 
> /usr/share/common-
> licenses/Artistic. It is not found in (guix licenses), and 
> sincee I do not
> run debian from that era I cannot compare the text to verify the 
> license's
> identity. Here's the relevant snippet from debian/copyright:

As noted on IRC: I've mirrored that file from a debian system[0]. 
What a mess: it's *almost* 
<https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Clarified_Artistic_License_1.0>, 
but not actually the same (e.g. points 3.e & 4.e are missing).

Considering this is what Debian calls the ‘Artistic’ licence, 
though, we can be almost certain that other Guix packages have the 
same subtle difference already.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: https://www.tobias.gr/Debian.Artistic.txt

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 832 bytes --]

Re: Help identifying licenses

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 669 bytes --]

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice 写道：
> As noted on IRC: I've mirrored that file from a debian 
> system[0]. What
> a mess: it's *almost*
> <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Clarified_Artistic_License_1.0>,
> but not actually the same (e.g. points 3.e & 4.e are missing).
>
> Considering this is what Debian calls the ‘Artistic’ licence, 
> though,
> we can be almost certain that other Guix packages have the same 
> subtle
> difference already.

It turns out that what text I had found on-line as the ‘Artistic 
1.0’ licence was either bogus or mislabelled.  It does seem to be 
the (non-free!) Artistic 1.0 licence.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 832 bytes --]

Re: Help identifying licenses

[Jesse Gibbons]

On Sun, 2019-10-06 at 20:58 +0200, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
> Tobias Geerinckx-Rice 写道：
> > As noted on IRC: I've mirrored that file from a debian 
> > system[0]. What
> > a mess: it's *almost*
> > <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Clarified_Artistic_License_1.0>,
> > but not actually the same (e.g. points 3.e & 4.e are missing).
> > 
> > Considering this is what Debian calls the ‘Artistic’ licence, 
> > though,
> > we can be almost certain that other Guix packages have the same 
> > subtle
> > difference already.
> 
> It turns out that what text I had found on-line as the ‘Artistic 
> 1.0’ licence was either bogus or mislabelled.  It does seem to be 
> the (non-free!) Artistic 1.0 licence.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> T G-R


As mentioned on IRC, The non-free artistic license the FSF links to and says
is too vague does not have an identical clause 8. OSI calls it the perl
version of artistic-1.0. I do not think FSF has looked at it.

Kenny was added to the filters git repo with its license note Feb 20 2006.
Has the license at the specified location been changed since then?

I will contact the copyright holders and see if they are willing to use
clarified-artistic or artistic-2.0 or disjunct artistic/gpl or some other
free license. If so, I will ask the package maintainer to change
debian/copyright with that detail. Until then, I will make sure the package
does not install or use kenny.
-- 
-Jesse