Please consider changing license for downstream

[siwinski]

I would like to package the Behat stack for Fedora/EPEL but Artistic 1.0 licensed software is not allowed in Fedora/EPEL. Please consider changing this library's license to the newer Artistic 2.0 license or perhaps even the MIT license like most other Behat libraries.

For reference, here are the Fedora software license lists:

• Good licenses
• Bad licenses (note this is where "Artistic 1.0" is listed for Fedora)

From http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ArtisticLicense :

Artistic License 1.0

We cannot say that this is a free software license because it is too vague; some passages are too clever for their own good, and their meaning is not clear. We urge you to avoid using it, except as part of the disjunctive license of Perl.

[stof]

This library is a port of a Perl library. This is probably why it was released by keeping the same license, as most of the library is just taking the Perl data and converting them to PHP files.

However, I don't know whether Perl is using Artistic 1 or 2. They don't mention the version. Can you tell me whether http://dev.perl.org/licenses/artistic.html is the version 1 or 2 ?

[siwinski]

That exact link is version 1. Version 2 is at http://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_2_0

One directory up from version 1 (http://dev.perl.org/licenses/) sounds like code can be GPL or Artistic License?

@remicollet -- Any chance you could help decipher the license and determine if this library's license could even be changed?

[remicollet]

According to github history there is only 2 commiters, so if both agree, updating version should be fine.

@siwinski if you want to be really sure, raise the question on fedora-legal mailing list.

[stof]

@remicollet this code was extracted from other places though (it was in Behat 2.x itself, and in Doctrine 1 before that). And all the x*.php files contain data maintained in the Perl library (the only difference being converting them from Perl files to PHP files)

[spotrh]

The standard "perl license" is Artistic 1.0 or GPL+ (any version of the GPL). Since there are known issues with the Artistic 1.0 license, Fedora chooses GPL+. If you wanted to relicense the work to that dual license, we'd use your work under GPL+ as well.

[siwinski]

@stof could this library use dual licenses Artistic 1.0 or GPL+ like Perl so it could be packaged for Fedora under GPL+?

[everzet]

This library is a copy-paste by me. As far as I know (feel free to correct me), you need approval from original authors for a change of license. I'm not them:
https://github.com/Behat/Transliterator/blob/master/src/Behat/Transliterator/Transliterator.php#L20-L22

[everzet]

Hmm. I just noticed this:
https://github.com/Behat/Transliterator/blob/master/src/Behat/Transliterator/Transliterator.php#L16

According to this line the actual license of the library should be LGPL, not Artistic.

[stof]

@everzet depends which part. The issue is that the code comes from multiple sources originally (LGPL is the part coming from Doctrine 1 whcih was LGPL, while Artistic is the part ported from Perl)

[stof]

and btw, see the comment in the phpdoc a few lines above the one you linked:

the original author names and emails are not known

[stof]

In summary, the licensing of this code base is already a huge mess

[valioDOTch]

Even more funny: CPAN does not list this as dual-licensed
https://metacpan.org/pod/Text::Unidecode

So probably I'd first ask Sean M. Burke whether he would be willing to dual-license it with LGPL (this is the preferred approach for Perl modules).

Then either consider porting it again from Perl or ask the original authors...

[siwinski]

Any progress or updates on the licensing of this project?

[remicollet]

From: http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/SBURKE/Text-Unidecode-1.27/LICENSE

This module, Text::Unidecode (along with its documentation and its
data tables) is distributed under the same terms as Perl itself.

Which means Gpl+ or Artistic, which is ok for downstream

[siwinski]

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Text-Unidecode/ defines Text::Unidecode's license as "The Perl 5 License (Artistic 1 & GPL 1)"

Downstream Fedora/EPEL defines Text::Unidecode's (perl-Text-Unidecode) license is "GPL+ or Artistic".

@stof would you accept a pull request changing composer.json license to:

"license": ["GPL-1.0+", "Artistic-1.0"],

and adding a GPL license file?