Re: esdl-license?

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Taylor R Campbell <riastradh%NetBSD.org@localhost> writes:

> Apparently esdl-license, used by devel/libsmi, is not marked as
> default acceptable, which is puzzling to me because it reads to me
> like an unremarkable permissive free software licence.

It is a permissive free software license, but the grant of permission to
distribute modified works under a different license is strange.

All in all, it's the bad old days of boutique, not carefully drafted
licenses.

> It looks like Debian has accepted it in main a long time ago (back in
> 2011), so I infer that it must have passed DFSG:
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsmi
> https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/libs/libsmi/copyright-0.4.8dfsg2-16
>
> Is there any reason not to rename it esdl and make it default
> acceptable?

Why is it call esdl?   That to me seems to come out of nowhere.


> (There is some extra language in esdl-license not appearing at
> https://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/projects/libsmi/COPYING.html?lang=de, and
> a 3-clause-bsd that does appear in there, so maybe these should be
> tweaked a little bit to separate the paragraphs, and the four cases
> in-tree updated to reflect this adjustment, but that's a minor issue
> past the main question here.)

I think fixing the ocnfusion is as important.

In this case:

* GOVERNMENT USE

This section doesn't belong, because that is solely about the US
government not getting "Unlimited Rights" to software produced under a
government contract.  It doesn't have any bearing on any party other
than the US government.  Basically it means that because the software
was not entirely developed under the contract the government has mostly
the same same rights as others, rather than a broader grant under
copyright law (agreed to in a contract) that allows it to broadly
re-license.  I've left out some details and fortunately forgotten
others.  But I have seen this marking and applied it in the past.

* libsmi COPYING

My interpretation is that libsmi includes code under the license we call
esdl, and also under the second license.   The second license is
modified-bsd, differing only in university/regents => institute.

So we should not add modified-bsd into esdl but instead mark the package
esdl AND modified-bsd.


* other uses and name esdl

  $ find . -name Makefile\* |xargs egrep esdl-license
  ./audio/snd/Makefile:LICENSE=           esdl-license
  ./audio/wavesurfer/Makefile:LICENSE=    esdl-license
  ./audio/tcl-snack/Makefile:LICENSE=     esdl-license AND gnu-gpl-v2
  ./devel/tkcon/Makefile:#LICENSE=        # esdl-license like with bourbon_ware clause v2
  ./devel/libsmi/Makefile:LICENSE=        esdl-license

** audio/snd

Terms are slightly different.  It drops

     "provided that existing copyright notices are retained in all
     copies and that this notice is included verbatim in any
     distributions."

** audio/wavesurfer

   perfect match, minus GOVERNMENT PURPOSES

** audio/tcl-anack

   perfect match, minus GOVERNMENT PURPOSES

   but the text is in "BSD" in the file, despite it not being BSD

** devel/tkcon

   close match: drops the (strange)

    [-Modifications to this software may be copyrighted by their authors
    and need not follow the licensing terms described here, provided
    that the new terms are clearly indicated on the first page of each
    file where they apply.-]



I don't find anything "esdl" anywhere.

Does anybody know where esdl comes from?