As requested, continuing from; https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=908499
I've already commented in bug 908499 comment #11. The original Artistic license is accepted by the OSI as an open source license. The FSF hasn't accepted it as a free software license, but has said that the problems are insubstantial. Our default (obviously based on a judgement call) is to follow the OSI and include Artistic in the OSI-APPROVED-FREE license group. However, there is a comment that points out its unsettled status. It is very easy for users to change this setting if they disagree. It is also listed as one of the examples in the make.conf(5) man page (which I had added there in 2013 already, as a matter of fact): # As before, but exclude the "Artistic" license ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE -Artistic" CCing trustees. Unless they disagree, I'll close this bug as WONTFIX.
As a member of both the Foundation Trustees and a long-standing license team member, I agree with ulm here. Gentoo uses @FREE to include licenses in ANY one of these three categories: - Explicitly FSF-approved - Explicitly OSI-approved - Not explicitly approved by either OSI or FSF, but complying with the FSF Free Software Definition. Of note, we don't expose a group today that says DFSG-approved. And maybe we should Artistic isn't directly in @FREE: it's in the @OSI-APPROVED group, because it's a statement of fact that both OSI and DFSG approved it. It would be wrong to remove it from that group. Beyond the scope of this ticket, we should introduce a @DFSG-APPROVED license group, which would let us clean up the slight mess documented in the license_groups comments. Today's @FREE is likely a close subset of FSF-APPROVED + DFSG-APPROVED, that would clarify the NOSA & Watcom-1.0 licenses (OSI-approved, not DFSG-approved, not FSF-approved). @FREE could become: @FSF-APPROVED @DFSG-APPROVED @MISC-FREE Additionally, as ulm points out, user that need to not include Artistic v1 for some reason can already do it (I would really like to know the why, so all Gentoo use cases are better documented)
Closing as per comment #1 and comment #2.
