Re: Bioconductor package flowPeaks license Artistic 1.0?

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

Zimoun,

Thank you for fighting for this package in Guix.  I hope upstream 
sees the light and Clarifies things.

zimoun 写道：
>  Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> wrote:
> > It would be great if they could use the Clarified Artistic 
> > License
> > instead.  It’s really close to the Artistic 1.0, so unless they 
> > really
> > want the non-free interpretation of Artistic 1.0 it should be 
> > no trouble
> > for them to switch.

This is the only solution.  Any other licence in licenses.scm is 
fine too.

> The file guix/licenses.scm contains "non-copyleft" therefore why 
> do
> not put the licenses Artistic 1.0 under this label? It will 
> allow the
> inclusion of this package -- and probable others from 
> Bioconductor.

‘Non-copyleft’ does not mean ‘non-free’.  All packages in Guix 
must be free.  The Artistic 1.0 licence is *not free*.[0]

I do understand your frustration & hacker instinct to ‘fix’ the 
problem in some clever way, but that's not how licences work.  The 
Artistic 1.0 story really ends here.

I'm not trying to demotivate you.  I just don't want you to waste 
your time & effort in this dead-end direction.  Bugging upstream 
until they respond is the only solution.

> Well, I have read both licenses and the Clarified one does not 
> appear
> me clearer; they are both doomed!

I hope you'll understand that I'm also not trying to be rude when 
I say (y)our personal opinions are entirely valid and absolutely 
irrelevant :-)

The FSF's legal counsel has decided that the Clarified version 
does in fact ‘correct the vagueness of of the Artistic License 
1.0’[2].

> Other said, calling Artistic 1.0 non-free in this Bioconductor 
> case is
> more a flavour of taste than a real legal issue.

No, it's a very real legal issue.  :-(

> Especially when this
> very Artistic 1.0 "qualifies as a free software license, but it 
> may
> not be a real copyleft" [1].

…but that's not this very licence, it's a completely different 
one: the (disjunct) combination of the Artistic 1.0 licence *and 
the GPL*, i.e. ‘choose one’.  The result is only free because you 
can *ignore* the Artistic 1.0 part.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: 
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#ArtisticLicense
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#PerlLicense
[2]: 
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#ClarifiedArtistic

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