New license request: HPND-sell-MIT-permission [SPDX-Online-Tools]

[whot]

1. License Name: HPND-sell-variant-MIT-disclaimer-permission-variant
2. Short identifier: HPND-sell-MIT-permission
3. License Author or steward: Unknown
4. Comments: A package using this license is used in Fedora and this particular license was found during license review. See the fedora-license-data issue [1] for details. This is a license used by xkeyboard-config.

[1] https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/363
5. License Request Url: http://tools.spdx.org/app/license_requests/302
6. URL(s): https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/blob/master/COPYING?ref_type=heads#L1781
7. OSI Status: Unknown
8. Example Projects: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/

[whot]

Obviously the naming and short identifier should be adjusted for something more sensible. Could be HPND-sell-variant-MIT-disclaimer-NSA, all the source files in the X server that use this license were written by an NSA employee at the time.

This is a variant of the HPND-sell-variant-MIT-disclaimer with the first paragraph missing "copyright notice" blurbs.

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that
this permission notice appear in supporting documentation.  This permission
notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

[jlovejoy]

it's actually quite close to mit-open-group, but omits the copyright notice reproduction obligation.

+1 to add, but not sure on name...

[whot]

cc @jexposit

[swinslow]

Agree that this one is (annoyingly) close-but-not-quite to https://spdx.org/licenses/HPND-sell-variant-MIT-disclaimer.html. Differences appear to be:

1. First paragraph includes separate sentence of "This permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." and doesn't include HPND-sell-variant-MIT-disclaimer's text "the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and"
2. Doesn't include the formatted "Disclaimer" ASCII art box
3. Final paragraph is all-caps (but I think otherwise identical)

2 seems easy to mark as optional, and 3 I think is not relevant for matching purposes. But 1 is (again, annoyingly) I think arguably substantively different, and also would be challenging to include with markup.

Given that, I'm inclined to add this one as a separate license ID / name. Not sure what best to use for the ID and name. @whot, is xserver the only project where you're seeing this particular formulation used?

[whot]

@whot, is xserver the only project where you're seeing this particular formulation used?

Yes, AFAICT. This one is a bit trickier to search for but as I said above it stems from one author and none of the other projects I can grep for his name (or NSA in more general) list the same copyright notice.

[jlovejoy]

ugh, this is a naming conundrum! I really wish we hadn't used "variant" in the ID for HPND-sell - it ends up being superfluous characters...

not sure if now using HPND-sell-MIT-disclaimer-no-copyright would be any better?
as NSA nor xserver are in the text of the license, those seem less helpful?

unless we just did something like HPND-sell-xserver and used the Notes to explain the similarity re: MIT disclaimer text?

[jlovejoy]

discussed on 11/9 - decided on: HPND-sell-MIT-disclaimer-xserver

[jlovejoy]

License Inclusion Decision

Decision:

• approved
• not approved

Name

Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer - sell xserver variant with MIT disclaimer

License ID

HPND-sell-MIT-disclaimer-xserver

XML markup

none

Notes:

This is similar to HPND-sell-variant-MIT-disclaimer but it omits the copyright notice reproduction obligation.

Next steps

If the license has been accepted, please follow the accepted-license process to create the PR.