[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Adding potentially questionable license AcePerl-Indemnity

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Thu, 23 Apr 2020, Kent Fredric wrote:

> I've just discovered dev-perl/Ace has some fun questionable licensing
> which includes a lovely indemnity clause, which had previously gone
> unnoticed, and it stipulates additional requests for research
> publications, which is not something mentioned in any license currently
> in tree other than Tinker

> Following is the entire body of the license I plan to put in
> licenses/AcePerl-Indemnity ( name chosen to specifically alert people
> tempted to accept this license that Indemnification is an important
> part they should actually read )

> Current advice also says that due to the terms of this license, we have
> to RESTRICT="mirror" this as well, unless the Trustees want to sign off
> on potentially indemnifying CSHL

> Also following up with CPAN because as its *currently* mirrored on
> CPAN, and has been mirrored there for at *least* 12 years, its
> potentially in a legal situation as well.

> ( But that's the fault of the uploader if true, because you can't
> upload anything to CPAN without mirroring being something you didn't
> expect )

> Once this license is added, the plan is to rework Ace-*.ebuild to be under

> LICENSE="|| ( Artistic GPL-1+ ) AcePerl-Indemnity"

> Upstream: https://metacpan.org/source/LDS/AcePerl-1.92/DISCLAIMER.txt

The important words are:
"This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself."
which makes it simply LICENSE="|| ( Artistic GPL-1+ )", and of course,
no mirror restriction is needed.

The rest is simply an additional warranty disclaimer. I wouldn't even
see it as part of the license, because it is about usage of the
software, not about its distribution.

As always: IANAL, TINLA.

Ulrich