LGPL-2.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl WITH an apse copyright notice retention (perl-String-Approx package)
License Review Request
License name
(roughly) LGPL-2.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl
Text of license
https://st.aticpan.org/source/JHI/String-Approx-3.28/apse.c:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of either:
a) the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
later version, or
b) the "Artistic License" which comes with Perl source code.
Other free software licensing schemes are negotiable.
Furthermore:
(1) This software is provided as-is, without warranties or
obligations of any kind.
(2) You shall include this copyright notice intact in all copies
and derived materials.
Package name and link to source
perl-String-Approx, https://metacpan.org/release/JHI/String-Approx-3.28/source
Is this license on the SPDX License List?
- https://spdx.org/licenses/LGPL-2.0-or-later.html
- https://spdx.org/licenses/Artistic-1.0-Perl.html
- The "Futhermore" clause has no identifier.
Reason for license review
First, I'd like to get "LGPL-2.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl" combination included in fedora-license-data along already existing "GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl". That's to silence rpminspect and rpmlint.
Then I'd like to know how to deal with the "Furthermore" clause. Currently we ignore it in License tag. The clause basically paraphrases LGPL. However, a reason for the clause's existence is different and it's explained in README.apse file https://st.aticpan.org/source/JHI/String-Approx-3.28/README.apse:
Please read the COPYRIGHT. This implementation shares no code with
agrep, none, it was made from scratch based on the Manber and Wu
papers. Still, I have looked at the source code of agrep. Therefore
I also include in this distribution the original agrep copyright, in
the file COPYRIGHT.agrep. The inclusion of this file in no way
affects the copyright of my code or the applicability of it to any
purposes, even commercial ones. The existence of COPYRIGHT.agrep only
serves the clause (2) in it, courtesy. The clauses (1) and (4) don't
apply because this is not agrep. In clause (3) our copyrights agree,
we guarantee nothing. This interpretation has been kindly sanctioned
by Udi Manber.
So the author claims that because he read a source code of agrep, he's bound the the agrep license found in COPYRIGHT.agrep file https://st.aticpan.org/source/JHI/String-Approx-3.28/COPYRIGHT.agrep:
This material was developed by Sun Wu, Udi Manber and Burra Gopal
at the University of Arizona, Department of Computer Science.
Permission is granted to copy this software, to redistribute it
on a nonprofit basis, and to use it for any purpose, subject to
the following restrictions and understandings.
1. Any copy made of this software must include this copyright notice
in full.
2. All materials developed as a consequence of the use of this
software shall duly acknowledge such use, in accordance with the usual
standards of acknowledging credit in academic research.
3. The authors have made no warranty or representation that the
operation of this software will be error-free or suitable for any
application, and they are under under no obligation to provide any
services, by way of maintenance, update, or otherwise. The software
is an experimental prototype offered on an as-is basis.
4. Redistribution for profit requires the express, written permission
of the authors.
That's why the author distributes COPYRIGHT.agrep and why apse.c has the "Furthermore" clause.
What's your stance on this compound license? Should we keep ignoring the "Furthermore" clause? Can we drop COPYRIGHT.agrep file from the binary package? Or should we ask SPDX of a new identifier?